


this one's for the torn down, the experts at the fall

by civilorange



Series: stumbling is not falling [1]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Child Soldiers, F/F, F/M, Gen, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Magic Realism, Minor Character Death, Original Character Death(s), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-05
Updated: 2015-10-15
Packaged: 2018-03-29 05:44:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 20
Words: 108,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3884629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/civilorange/pseuds/civilorange
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Maybe it makes us both villains,” it’s a sad thought, without heart and without soul, “maybe there are no heroes.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. legitimacy

**Author's Note:**

> So, sitting comfortable near chapter twenty, and the end of this story, I feel like I can edit this opening note to be a little more helpful. This has been a journey I hadn't expected to take, going from a simple idea jotted down to get through the off-season, to something else. Something bigger. A few things to note; this is a Lexa character study. It starts at the age of five, and goes all the way through the current place of the show, and beyond. It is my idea of how someone so young can have such a handle on sacrifice; can make those big decisions without flinching, without losing her mind. There are a bunch of original characters, and all kinds of angst.
> 
> The show falls somewhere around chapter ten, and goes from there. There is going to be a sequel.

You’re five summers old when your father allows you to travel with him; he’s a whip of a man, tall and narrow, and he ghosts through your life once or twice a year. Your parents never stayed, not like the other families in the village—you mother was a woman who only showed her face at night, and always with a new nameless man and your father is the rickety wheels of a merchant caravan and a tarnished golden necklace. The orphanage says you’ll be a healer, or a farmer—but you want to be like your father. You want to wash away into the afternoon sun, and always be greeted with a smile—small villages would die without the seasonal trade caravan, without the ridiculously overprices goods and the cutthroat business man who ran it.

It isn’t until you’re tall enough to reach the rings at the top of the cart, or strong enough to direct the massive horses that you’re allowed to join him—not as his daughter, he’s insistent that he doesn’t have any of those. But as his apprentice—his _second_ you chirp too helpfully, a term you’ve heard around the older boys, who practically salivate when warriors come back from the skirmishes on the far borders. Stopping briefly to get a hot meal, and a good night’s sleep.

“No,” he’s insistent again, not his _second_. His apprentice. His accent is rough, from far north, and his hair is pale, the color of wheat and the sun, and when it’s hot and bright in the summer, you compare the streaks of color that tangle through your dark strands. Sun bleaching, an old woman croons while petting your head like an animal—she’s haggling over wolf pelts, and your father is all crooked smiles and shrugging shoulders. He asks for ten, she promises eight and a meal—he then asks for twelve, and somehow ends up with ten and a meal.

You wonder why they always agree—your father is hardly intimidating, and he never raises his voice. It’s something in his sharp green eyes, something that makes people nervous, and yet still wish to be around him—a healer supplies the answer. It wasn’t something in his eyes—it was something that was _missing_ , that common courtesy, the ability to worry for others. He was a profoundly selfish man, and selfish men are dangerous, because there was no depth they wouldn’t reach for gain.

But that can’t be all, you wonder, isn’t everyone greedy now and again?

You wonder if it’s the large men who lumber beside the carts, guarding it from quick hands and careless drunks. They’re brash and rough, and they tend to shove you around like another piece of the merchandise they’re meant to protect. “Little sparrow,” they call you, due to your sharp elbows and quick eyes. “Fly away,” they drawl, and you stand your ground for as long as it takes them to take a threatening step forward— _one day_ , you think when scrabbling into the dark back of a cart.

* * *

Your father calls you a body seer; and you don’t know what it means. But you think it has something to do with the questions he asks—how many children did someone have? What was their hobby? How many coins in their purse? Were they willing to negotiate? It was the little things you noticed—the limp in a farmer’s leg, the smudge of ink on a painter’s fingers, the notches in a family walking stick. Little details that presented a story for you to follow. Your father’s always nicest when you’re right—so after a while, you refuse to be wrong. You grasp for the hardest clues, and you squirrel away the rare golden toothed smiles he offers you.

It only takes a few months before the village merchants are watching _you_ with caution, pulling their cloaks tightly around themselves, leaving all personal affects far away from your sharp eyes. Your father has become your keeper, and guileless as you are, you’ve become the danger. You pick apart the facts because you’d do anything for the scraps of affection your father shows when you solve the walking puzzles that are the merchants of flahkkru and whetkru, and the highbrow _business men_ of Polis.

The merchants of the capitol look down their noses at your bare feet, and the stiff clothing your father makes you wear when you go to the big city—the clothing is expensive and new, and is hardly comfortable. And it is noticeable. The way you shift, and pull at the fabric, unable to sit still for even a moment. It marks you as different, as not belonging in the loud bustle of the city.

“Legitimacy,” he whispers to you one evening, swirling the foul smelling drink he drowns himself in almost every night. “Legitimacy is what matters. Beyond the breath in your lungs, and the sun in your hair, and the ground beneath your feet—legitimacy is what rules the wills of lesser men.” He’s grinning sharply at you, bent close to toy with a blonde highlight in your hair—telling you secrets because though he says he has no daughter, you’re his apprentice, and that’s almost the same thing.

“Men are sheep,” he whispers while laughing to himself, “they follow even a wolf if they’re told to.” You wonder if he thinks you’re a sheep, if he thinks himself a wolf—his green eyes might frighten others, but you think they just look sad. He’s alone in a room of people. It isn’t until it is far past your usual bedtime that you ask him—tucked under his arm, holding up his weight.

“Not at all, dear heart.” Now he does seem sad, his voice softer than you’ve ever heard. “You’re a wolf if I’ve ever seen one.” You don’t understand, but you don’t disagree. You have nothing against wolves, but why does it feel like your shoulders are just a few pounds heavier—like a weight has settled.

* * *

 

You’ve been with your father’s caravan for one summer when you meet Enrik; he’s a large square boy whose voice is soft, with eyes even softer. He shows up that first night, when even your father’s guards are out drinking before he asks how much a booklet of paper is. His large hand is curled into a fist around rusted copper chips, and you know they’re worthless—hardly worth the dirt beneath the wheels. But you lean over the rail, a wooden hilted dagger waved wildly, like somehow the boy twice your size will be frightened—he does take a step back, but then he asks again. “How much for a booklet of paper?”

“Why?” You ask, head tipped because you can’t fathom why such a brutal looking boy would want something as useless as paper. The swords and daggers in the next cart, surely, or maybe even the farming equipment they’d just purchased from the crumbling farm at the end of town.

“I’m a writer,” the boy supplies, nervous dark eyes skipping to everybody that stumbles out of the tavern drunk and loud—it was the first time you saw how someone so big, could look so small. It was the curve of his shoulders, and the fidget of his fingers on the useless copper. Your father called you a body seer, regaled customers on how your eyes missed not a thing—such a sharp little sparrow he had—and it isn’t until now that you wished you could look away. That you didn’t notice the faded bruise at the collar of his shirt, or the almost healed split to his lip.

You ask him what he writes, because while you have a cart full of books, you’ve never opened one—never even thought to learn how to read.

“Stories,” his eyes brighten, “of places far from here. Of heroes.” It’s the witching hour, and the moon is already beginning to sink when the pelt of the tavern is thrust open and your father leaves with a ravaged man of many scars—the golden sash around his waist says he’s important. But it’s your sharp eye that sees the boy’s features mirrored in this harsh man. They’re laughing loudly enough to disturb the quiet, and your father’s golden tooth matches too well with the savage man of war he slings his arm across. The boy flinches, and your mind it made up.

“Write me a story,” it’s a demand, thrusting a bound set of paper into his hands, refusing the useless copper; a story about adventure, and danger, and most importantly. “About a sparrow.”

* * *

 

You’ve been _little sparrow_ longer than you’ve been anything else—the women at the orphanage called you many names, they could never keep all the children straight. Balti, Richme, Lina, Quinta—it was harsh eyes and sharp tones that called to you, not any particular arrangement of letters.

You never wonder why you didn’t have a name; it’s because you didn’t have a family, no one was there to give you one. You’ve heard of name day celebrations; the bright fires and the gathered people on a child’s first winter. Your village didn’t have many, because very few children lived to one—too far north, the women who ran the orphanage would mutter when another family began their mourning.

Enrik is almost twice your age, but he never listens when the other boys tease him. He’s a second now, his green sash tied across his barrel chest, his face bloodied and broken. But he always smiles for you, always sits in the shade of a tree when he’s given a moment between beatings to guide your finger across the words of yet another book. He’s learning how to speak English, and though he can barely understand it, he tries teaching you.

You’re reading about Alexander the Great—a man from many seasons ago, before the bright sky and the blood rain, before the towering clouds and the acid fog. A man who conquered the world, all of it—his horse black as night, and his shadow so frightening even the beast couldn’t face it. So instead, they rode toward the sun.

You try saying the name, butchering the syllables until they’re jumbled and ruined—the strange mark twisting your tongue impossibly. But Enrik says is perfectly, the ridiculous letter hard and strong—“ _Aleksanda_.” You like how it sounds; like everyone had to pause and really think about the letters. On how they smashed together to make a name. You want to make it yours.

“Alexander,” he ponders, “isn’t that too long for a little sparrow?” You know he says it with something akin to affection, but you shove his shoulder nonetheless. You haven’t been _little_ since last time you saw him—you can jump from the highest roof and hardly stumble. You can carry a full arm load of swords without effort. You’re practically grown—it doesn’t matter that you’re just over eight summers old.

“Lexa,” you settle for the best part of the name right now—the part that makes even Enrik pause to corral the sounds. He says the name and smiles, nodding—you like how he says it. His mentor hollers for him to stop lazing about, and you shove him away, cradling the book in your lap.

“Toward the sun,” you remind him; because that was how Alexander conquered the world, toward the sun. Surely your namesake had everything figured out if he conquered the whole world—Enrik was just trying to win one fight. Or maybe, just not lose so badly.

* * *

Ambushes happen; bandits and rogues cast out of their villages hunt the dark paths in the deepest parts of the forest. They linger for caravans and slaughter everyone within—you’ve been through a few, but your father’s men are hardened warriors from battles on the worst of the borders. They don’t flinch when howlers fall from the trees with sharp blades, and black painted faces.

This time is no different, you figure, tucked away in the darkest corner of the weapons cart—your small, narrow hands wrapped around your favorite wooden dagger. The sounds from outside are sharp and the taste of copper in on your tongue—you don’t like how quiet it’s gotten. You don’t know what the silence means, because your father’s men are loud brash men. They cursed and insulted, and desecrated the men they kill—this quiet was bone deep and frightening.

With the silence still ringing in your ears the cart’s cover is tossed back, and you flinch forward, and not away—dagger thrust with the loose knuckled grip Enrik had taught you, forward and twist. And suddenly you can’t move any more—your blade is stuck between a man’s ribs and his eyes look black in the dark. You tip forward off the lip of the cart, half pulled by the man, until you’re barely supporting both your weights.

The dagger slid in too easily, his red, red, _red_ , blood spills over your hands and you see too much of the whites of his eyes. His pupil swimming like muddy brown frogs on a too large pond—he looks surprised, your brain will supply later. His mouth gaping like a caught fish, his large, large, _large_ , fingers scrabbling at the fur line of your collar to drag you to the ground as he crumples.

You’ve seen dead men before, many actually—but you’ve never seen a _dying_ man. You didn’t realize how important this distinction was until this moment—until you watched the glaze sluggishly pull at the color of his eyes, and he stops. Everything, just stops. He’s too heavy to move, his frame set upon yours and you’re left to stay there. Pinned beneath a dying man in the cold of a northern winter.

You tell him how sorry you are, that you hadn’t meant to—that he’d simply startled you. But you stop apologizing when you see the strewn frame of your father across the path in an embankment of snow. His body lays strangely, and you can just make out the glint of his golden tooth and necklace in the moonlight. He looks so small dead—more a little sparrow than you ever were, because you could still grow—and he was dead. He would never grow again.

The second half of your father’s men find you in the morning, the body upon you stiff with death, and you’d run out of tears by the time you were pulled gracelessly to your feet. Nothing. You feel nothing—as dead as the men laying on the ground. Your once light colored clothing are now rusted with dried blood, your hands shake, but you hadn’t realized you’d taken the dagger from the man’s chest, had it curled tightly in the grip of your left hand.

They ask you what happened, shake you until you can give them an answer—you tell them how quiet it was, how so many people died silently. About how the man had gurgled in his own blood before he’d died—you haven’t even seen ten summers yet, but you know what a dying man looks like—you know how warm blood melts snow, and light colored fabric hides nothing.

“Little sparrow,” they begin, but you stop them—that wasn’t your name, never had been. But your new name had belonged to just you and Enrik before now, it had felt like the world’s biggest secret. But you’re not a brittle little bird anymore, no. You’ve darkened your hands with blood, and you think this may have been how Alexander felt, when he took his first step toward the sun. A blistering heat in his chest, and an impossible cold in his bones.

“ _Aleksanda_ ,” you supply while wiping your blade on your already ruined shirt. “Lexa,” you settle. You try to close your father’s eyes, but they are stiff and the green eyes that match your own stare sightlessly at the sky. You place two golden coins over his unseeing eyes, because even in death he wouldn’t settle for useless copper.

“It’s a two day ride to the next village,” when you say this the living men start and are confused. Their employer was dead, why did it matter how far it was? You’re not a child anymore, you don’t think you ever were—just pretending to be. You father had called you a wolf once, had seen something below the flesh and bones—some hidden thing lurking in your heart. This delay will be a problem, especially with winter chasing you tail so closely—you need to get moving.

The men don’t know how to handle a small girl clambering up onto the lead cart, you imagine, they seem almost numb as they filing into position. The monster of a horse at the front of the caravan has always given you trouble, tossed his head with a demon in his eye, refused to budge for you. Alexander had a mighty horse, a monster with such a frightening shadow that even he flinched away—you wonder if they had a moment like this. A horse knows a person, really knows them—you’d heard an elder say when a colt bolted away from your father, but had muzzled into your chin.

“Do you know me?” You ask him, hoping beyond hope that he had an answer, because you’re lost—a wolf, a sparrow, a conqueror. He doesn’t answer, and you don’t really expect him to—but he tosses his head, and starts forward.

Not toward the sun, as the blanket of night has fallen—but you chase the moon toward the horizon.

* * *

The ambush had shattered the order of the caravan, the unrest was felt all the way to that first village—the horses moved, the men walked, and you—remained. Sat at the front like you had any notion of what you were doing—not even ten summers, and everything already seemed so _heavy_.

The sell swords had tried their hand at bartering, tried to take up your father’s mantle of silver tongued snake, but they were slow brutes kept on the ground by muscle alone. Not a working brain between them. But people recognized you—you were your father’s leashed body seer, your eyes as sharp and green as his had been, and you’ve learned how to mimic his smile. All tooth, wide and unsettling. You slip into a guard’s deal, asking about his mother’s health—you see a glint of poppy powder at the bed of his nail, and a woven necklaces decades older than he.

“She’d do well with a night-leer mixture,” you intone, turning his eye toward the sluggish green bottle in your palm. The sun catching it just right, looking to have a star caught within the muck. “Finest you’ll find this side of the ice,” And he’s sold. Your familiar face makes things easier—you are your father’s wolf, after all. And these men are sheep, just looking for proper direction—they don’t see the sharp line of your teeth, or that _something_ in your green eyes. That’s alright.

“A girl,” a distressed mother of two whispers, “and a _gonakru_ of bandits.” They don’t realize the ugly ruined men lurking in the shade of the carts are _yours_. That they’d follow a girl if it meant their pockets were full of coin; that you had that something they lacked, the thing that had kept your father in control for so long. Despite being the whip of a man he was, a man who’d never picked up a weapon in his life—yet still a dangerous man.

Unlike your father, you’ve killed a man—the rust had been in the beds of your nails for days, despite how hard you’d scrubbed. Rharn is the oldest of your father’s guards, and he teaches you how to wield you small wooden knife—how to use your small size, and your sharp mind to take down men twice, three times, your size.

* * *

 

Home is a foreign word to you, because you don’t believe you have one. You have wagon wheels, and dirt paths and towering trees—the village you lived in until you were five was just a place. One you’d never been back to since you’d left—it makes you think maybe your father had stopped by twice a year just to see you. To catch glimpses of you at the orphanage, to see if his blood kin still lived—not his daughter, his _apprentice_.

A war at the border just beyond the small mountain village had erupted in the last months, you’d be on the far side of the world gathering delicacies and exotic mixtures. Farther than any other caravan was willing to travel—through battles and across borders. But somehow it brought you back here; ten summers old, just under two from your father’s death. He’d died in winter, and it was now spring. You’re taller, but still as thin, shoulders brittle looking but strong—the ash gray and cold metal of your armor is intimidating. Your wooden dagger settles on your thigh, but a sword has joined at your waist.

“My girl,” a woman croons, “my darling girl!” She’d all elbows and knees, her skin dark from constant exposure to the sun, and you hardly recognize the woman who was almost your mother—the one who’d left you at the orphanage because she’d been just a girl herself. It’s when she goes to throw her arms around you that your men react, blades already sliding from their sheaths, bloodlust in their eyes.

You catch her by the shoulders, and though your hands are not large, she seems smaller because of the contact—you reach her chin, but she’s bones and paper-thin skin, and her hair is thinning and brittle. She was beautiful once, but a plague had ravished the north. Had torn through the villages at the far border, and threatened to wipe each and every one of them off the map.

“I’m not your girl,” you assure her, voice low, because so much of you wanted this your whole life—for the woman who looked so much like you to give you even a moment of consideration. To just look at you, and realize she’d made a mistake—you would have forgiven her anything, if she’d only asked you to. “I might’ve been,” you try to push her away, to make her take her own weight, “Once.”

She wails, her thin bird like arms spread wide until you’re clasped to her chest—she smells like moss and smoke, and something lingering you recognize. Death.

“My Ailbhe,” she sobs, her large tears getting lost in the dark winter color of your hair, her fingers dig into the rough leather of your armor. _Ailbhe_ , that’s what you would’ve been named had she wanted you. “My precious Ailbhe.” But you’d named yourself—you and a soft warrior boy from the swamps, across the plaines—a boy you missed dearly. You remove her gently, but you know your eyes are hard—you see it in the glee your men display. You’re a wolf, and this brittle little sheep wishes to know the real you—

But you can’t. You see the hollows beneath her eyes, and the yellow tilt of her skin. You know she only has days, no more left in her—she’s grasping for strings that she’d long since cut. Nothing tethered you to her anymore—but you can’t let her die alone, it unsettles your stomach and locks your bones. So you guide her to the hall you and your men intend to stay at for the night—tuck her into the bed you’d rented for yourself, and brush her hair back.

“My Ailbhe,” she murmurs, her dark eyes already losing focus, the manic glint she’d had outside fading away as her energy leaves her. You don’t tell her that you aren’t Ailbhe, because that girl had never existed. You’d been Balti, Richme, Lina, Quinta—Little Sparrow, and Alexander; though you've only ever been called Lexa. But how hard could it be to be Ailbhe for a night? To be the girl who might’ve been a healer, or a farmer, who never left the village and hadn’t seen the world.

“Yes, _nomon_.” The word is clumsy on your tongue, because you realized you’ve never said it—you’ve never had a mother, and it is sour this night, because you’re pretending. This woman isn’t your mother, any more than you were her daughter. You want to rage, want to toss her shaking pale hand away and leave the inn—want to tarnish this moment with anger, and hate, and everything you’ve learned to bottle up inside.

But she says, “my girl” so softly, so lovingly you lose your flame. She could’ve been your mother, once long ago, but now she’s just a dying woman who had no one else. You don’t like how pity tastes on your tongue, like ash and smoke and the last bitter night in winter.

When her eyes close, and her chest stills, you press a kiss to her forehead and whisper, “My name is Lexa, _nomon_.”

Your caravan leaves before her pyre is lit.

* * *

 

“They’ve found _Heda_ ,” you’ve heard the title before, the reverent whispers of warriors and peasants alike. Of a being sacred, and eternal, and cherished—the spirit of their leader had left its last chosen just before you’d been born. A grand battle on mountains and ice rivers, of ten thousand men, and a ultimate victory—a life had ended that day, and the search for the commanders spirit had begun. You’ve heard low stories of how they always found _Heda_ young. Could corner the village, and gather the child before it could be molded by anyone other than the last commander’s generals.

But this time, the spirit was illusive. Spiritual men who’d never failed before traveled to every end of the map, to every village, and they’d yet to scent the eternal soul. They searched the eyes of babes, and couldn’t find a thousand memories stashed away in newborn blue. Your men laugh louder at every perceived failure—you know they say _Heda_ in the same reverent whispers as everyone else, but they need to pretend. That this unusual length without known command is not bothering them; that they hadn’t become bandits simply because the one they followed wasn’t present.

They were loyal men with no one to be loyal too.

Your caravan is stopped on the road just outside Polis, a woman with a golden sash and ashen features stops your massive beast of a horse with just an outstretched hand. She isn’t tall, but there’s something deadly about her posture—something in the way her finger toys with the hilt of her blade. Her hair is light colored, and her eyes narrow—she’s beautiful, you think. Maybe the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen; but that seems like a disservice, so you don’t say it.

“No merchants, not even a _goufa_.” You bristle, because no one has had the mind to call you a child in years—you’re small, and your face still round from youth, but had you been on the path of the warrior, you’d almost be old enough to be a second. You can see she likes the reaction she got, see it in the quirk of her lip and the tilt of her chin. You’re off the cart’s lip before you can think, and all the warriors at the cities gates draw their blades. You imagine they weren’t used to someone not listening; this woman is imposing, especially now that you’re flat footed and looking up at her.

“Still haven’t found your _heda_?” It’s a losing hand, you know that from the start, but are still somehow surprised when the hilt of her blade lands swiftly and sharply against the rise of your cheek. Stars burst and darkness swells, but you have just enough mind to bark _pleni_ at your men before they can even think to throw themselves into the mess of an encounter. The blood on your cheek is bright and sluggish, and you have a mouthful of copper to spit on the ground.

“I take that as a no?” You’re cheeky, and for your trouble you get another solid blow from a metal studded fist—this cheek must be your weaker one, because you’re positive you lose a minute or two. Because when you begin the agonizing climb to your feet, there’s dirt in your mouth. The woman is practically growling, and she doesn’t let you say anything else before grabbing you by the collar of your vest, and hoisting you from the ground—you take a moment to marvel at how strong she was. You’re not large by any means, but you’re solid—and she is only a hand taller.

You hear many harsh bellows of _Anya_ , while you get a closer look at her face—she looks sad, and it’s something you’ve become so familiar with over the seasons. The dull edges of her eyes, and the harsh pinch of her lips. She was sad in the same way Enrik was sad, silently and stubbornly—like giving into the feeling would consume them whole, and they would be nothing afterwards.

She sets her knee harshly into your stomach, and you can hear your bones groan in protest—you can hear the creak in your jaw when she carves the shark metal tip of her knuckles into your skin. Your bloody, and limp, and she is _so_ angry. This woman who’s seen a thousand battles, who’d been forced to kill her own brother when he’d be become a reaper, swallowed by madness. She’d held you _so_ gently as you died—cheeks cold from the harsh weather, the snow crimson around you, her hands impossibly small against the rough beard hiding the ruined mess of your jaw. You’d barely been able to see her, your vision foggy and dipping into black.

Her voice had been small and shaking when she’d murmured, “ _yu gonplei ste odon, heda_ ” and you think she was crying. And all you wanted to do was make her feel better. Let her know that you’d find her again—this bright, strong second of yours. The darkness in your vision was melting and sharp, it dulled and expanded and suddenly you couldn’t tell if you were outside _Polis_ or on the peak of the further mountain north. But Anya was here, and that made it alright—Anya was alive. Your lips were sluggish with remembered cold—and fresh bruises—but you just want her to feel better.

“ _Yu gonplei nou ste odon, Onya. Mebi oso na hit choda op nodotaim._ ” Your fight isn’t over here, Anya. May we meet again. You don’t know why you said it, because you’ve never met this woman before, but she drops you like your skin has become molten. Like even brushing you burns her, and a hush has fallen over the gathered warriors. You don’t realize, because your ears are ringing, and your eyes are watering, and it takes you twice as long to stand up.

But you do stand up.

“That all you have?” Your mouth is filled with blood, but it feels like cotton—your knees shake, and one arm is useless at your side, but you're standing, on your own two feet. And—the woman isn’t. She’s on her knees, eyes just a little too wide, features contorted into something that looks like awe—or maybe horror. You don’t remember hitting her, but maybe you had, somewhere in the black.

“ _Heda._ ” She gasps, and it’s a strong sound coming from such a beautifully deadly woman—but the confirmation is all the gathered needed to follow suit. Clattering to their knees in heavy armor, and thumping battle worn fists against their chest. An army, felled by a bloody girl in too big clothes who hadn’t even been able to lift a fist. You’re confused, and swaying, and you can distinctly saying, “No, I’m Lexa.”

Before you fall into darkness.


	2. lambs to war

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What’ve we here?” A whistle through obviously missing teeth, the rough white fur of an ice nation warrior obvious at the corner of your eye. “Sending their lambs to war, are they.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And this is something? I still have no idea what I'm writing until I am actually writing it, but I don't think it came out too horribly. I apparently don't have any kind of grasp on the English language, and yet still insist on writing things. 
> 
> Fell free to follow me on tumblr, **civilorange**

You don’t speak for two moons, glowering and angry; coiled tightly in the corner of spacious rooms and grand halls. You’ve only ever known cramped carts and filthy taverns. Thin soft servants flit in and out, using soothing tones like you’re some type of rabid animal. Cornered and dangerous, as if all you needed was a considerate hand offering food and safety. No—safety would be your caravan, would be your men, and would be the darkest corners of the woods. You knew the whole world; because no particular part of it was your home. You knew the mountain passes of the north, the salted isles of the south, the harsh deserts of the west, and the lush forest of the east—your shelter was open skies, and your craft was selling pieces of yourself to people who would never really know you.

When you woke that first night your dusty travel clothing was replaced with pale loose silk and soft flowing cotton; dirty fingernails itching at the fabric because it was _too_ comfortable. Soft adults years your senior speak to you like a child, spinning words in both your native tongue and _English_ , which you understood only sparsely. They called you _heda_ always, as if not a single one of them knew your name. You were just a fulfillment to them, something they’d been looking for—even though you hadn’t been lost. At least, you didn’t ever feel lost.

You refuse dinner for the fifth night in a row, no longer even picking at the lavish meals left near the door, your body is weak, and your mind dulling. The walls depicting pictures of people you did not recognize growing fuzzy and inarticulate—you don’t know what you intend to accomplish, and some logical, adult part of you know you’re being childish. Acting your age. But you don’t want to be here, you want the familiarity of open space, of control, and familiarity—you don’t want to be lost anymore, because it wasn’t until that found you that you lost your grip on _everything_

You’re half-asleep when she slips in, pressed into a corner, fingers wrapped loosely around a metal utensil—too dull to do much damage, but it had been presented with the bread from when you were meant to break your fast. She’s a shadow slipping from dark patch to dark patch, utterly silent and united with the lack of light—hoisting you up with sure hands and a brutal grip, a strangled sound erupts from your throat and you thrust your dulled bread knife toward her mass. You know what warriors are capable of—those with blue and purple sashes are hard enough to manage, but a golden one? You’d never stayed long enough to worry about their ability.

“You have them all fooled.” She’s hissing like a disturbed snake, rattling off words with a vibration in her throat. Your feet don’t touch the ground when she holds you against the wall—you’ve never been the tallest, or the largest, but you’re quick, and you know how to take a blow. _Thick headed_ , your father had said it like a compliment. “You’re not him.” _Him_. The last commander, the man who had the heart of a nation nestled comfortably in his hands—who was loved more than he was hated. A man who had been dead for as long as you’ve been alive. Mention of him made you bristle because so many people spoke to you with a familiarity that they hadn’t earned—because they assumed you were this _heda_.

It’s with frustration that you kick off the wall and thrust what slight weight you have into her superiorly muscled body; she hardly wavers, but you’re quick. And unpredictable. Twisting from the grip on your collar, you drop a thin bony shoulder and lodge it in the center of her chest—she didn’t wear armor, and it was a relief that she released her hold and staggered back a step. You scamper away to the far side of the room, and hold her in your sight—she was still beautiful, this Anya, but you didn’t care anymore. Because she was dangerous, and you hadn’t lived this long by being careless.

“I’m not.” You agree, because it is the one thing you have in common—everyone else gives you this man’s reverence, his honor, but you aren’t him. No matter what they say. And this scorned beautiful warrior is the only one that agrees with you. You feel claustrophobic and alone; and for a stashed away orphan, that was an accomplishment. Your fingers tighten around the tarnished silver of your dull knife, and you slowly move toward the door, away from her lengthening shadow—the hall is silent, and you know she’d dismissed those who typically linger in the long passages. They think you safe with a dead man’s second.

She doesn’t move to stop you, only watches you with hidden eyes—you wonder what had changed, she’d been the first to say you were a dead man, but after the rituals that would prove their claims, she’d backed away and refused to be a part. You think you know why—you’re a body seer, after all, a merchant wolf with a silver tongue and a golden smile. You toyed with the golden molar you’d gotten to honor your father, cold and metallic in your mouth, always reminding you faintly of blood. You watch her with inscrutable eyes and tip your chin.

“He was gone long before they found me,” you supply, breaking the silence like a snapped cord; you know you’ve gotten it right when she reacts. Like a bull catching a glimpse of red, she barrels forward and it’s only a quick decision to dive to the right that saves you. If you were who they claimed—some sacred figure of leadership—the man she loved would be dead, completely and wholly. You can see it in the clench of her jaw, and the flare of her nostrils—she had hoped beyond hope to never find the next in line, because that allowed some lingering possibility that he had lived. This nameless commander that you were supposed to have been.

You are quick, but she’d quicker, snagging two fingers into the loose fabric of your collar and drawing you into her curled fist. Stars erupts more readily than the dark spots, and you’re proud of yourself for keeping your feet—even more proud when the dull knife you’ve kept curled to your forearm lashes out and digs a harsh blunt line of red down her bicep. The red is sluggish—and not yours—which is the best kind. Without question that is the last blow you land.

But you refuse to stay down, even when your body aches, and your mind is foggy, you mindlessly—and sightlessly—stagger to your feet despite the weeping wounds littering your body. The crimson soaking into the pale fabric of your clothing; your feet are heavy, a thousand pounds each, but it isn’t until you attempt a step toward her that she husks, “Stop.” All you can see is the gold of her sash, she’s cast into darkness from the moon lingering at the top of the trees. There’s something in her hand, a piece of fabric coiled tight around her fist. She tosses it toward you, it had just enough weight and shape to tumble across the ground at touch the toes of your bare feet.

“Go, _goufa_.” She’s sneering, but even in the dark, her face doesn’t match the tone. How could someone hold so much sadness? “You don’t belong here.” _And you never will_ , seems to linger unsaid, but she doesn’t move toward you again. She’s stoic and untouched, ruby glinting on her arm where you caught her with your dull blade. This isn’t a retreat, you promise yourself, as you grab the bundle—eyes never leaving her, ears listening for any movement in the hall.

It isn’t running, you tell yourself.

* * *

You’ve always had a fascination with legends. The tall tales of people long dead who had done extraordinary things. Men who conquered the world, and women who enslaved the sky—the commander has always been a legend. A spirit more than a person, a feeling more than a truth—the people need something to believe in, when their kin are swallowed by ravenous mountains, and their warriors frozen in ice fields. You’ve heard your fill of stories involving the leader; of grand battles, and risky tactics—failures glorified just as readily as the victories.

It hadn’t taken word long to trickle through the villages, each version slightly different, each tale taller the further from Polis you trek— _heda_ had been found, marched on the capitol with an army all their own, a hundred kill marks and a reaper’s hook rusted with blood. You stand in a paltry market in stolen clothing; listening to warriors eagerly gossip, their eyes bright, their smiles hungry and wanting. Life is pouring into the gray that had lingered in every gaze you’ve come upon. Everyone is bustling around as if it was the first day of spring, and not the bitterest day of autumn.

It takes you a month to reach the northern border, closer to your home village than you’d have liked, but you hadn’t known where to go. The living you’d poured your all into had been crushed by a forced destiny—one that you didn’t even believe was your own. That night in the beacon of the capitol, Anya had given you two things—the wood handled knife you’d always kept with you, and a pale blue sash. The mark of a warrior just beyond a second, one who had proven themselves, but was still just an able body—until merit garnered a sash of a much darker, richer blue. Inside the deerskin pelt was the other sash she’d given, absolutely hidden from sight—the vibrant bright crimson tangled with golden pendants. The mark of the commander.

You don’t intend to find the battlefront, not truly, but the cold addled your mind, and the dark turned you around until there were campfires and hunched bodies. A man easily twice your size thrusts a sword beneath your chin when the first hint of light crosses your face; his dark eyes calm, his expression hidden by a full beard and curling tattoos. His brow furrows, but he takes you in—pale blue sash, dark tanned skin, and dark curling hair. This close to winter, none of your father’s northern blood shows.

“ _Gada_ ,” he rumbles, his lip twitching just a little—you don’t like how he looks at you, like he knows things that he shouldn’t. That he can tell your years too young to have this colored sash—not even old enough to be a second. “Get more wood.” He releases you and thrusts you toward the wood again, toward the axe lodged edge first into a stump. Even though you can hardly feel your fingers, you curl them around the handle and heft it up and over your shoulder. You crave the heat of the fire—two candle marks in the wood, and a night in the warmth of the fed flame. It seemed the only course of action.

* * *

The man who had put you to work that first night is Gustus, his accent southern and his words few—despite his gruff countenance, he shepherds the younger warriors. Giving them tasks and pushing them beyond what they’d previously thought their limit—he seems to enjoy knocking you to the ground when you spar. Sweeping your legs clean out from underneath and leaving you heaving for breath in the snow. You don’t know why you stay—you fall asleep every night aching and exhausted, you wake up too early every morning, but there is the same sense of belonging as there had been in the caravan. Men and women who worked together for a common goal.

You don’t even feel like you’re in a war zone until the middle of winter—night falls and the fires blaze, but you’ve had a buzzing sensation in your bones all afternoon. Growing more agitated as the sun sank toward the horizon; something feels wrong, but Gustus pushes your head to the side and tells you to water the horses. It is when you’re ensconced in their pen that you feel the eyes on your back, crawling up your spine. You’ve always had a sense for this, for the disturbance of air, which had allowed you to survive through your childhood of bandit ambushes.

You aren’t playing at warrior anymore, this game has gone too far, especially when a cold blade it notched under your chin, and a face riddled with scars presses into your temple. “What’ve we here?” A whistle through obviously missing teeth, the rough white fur of an ice nation warrior obvious at the corner of your eye. “Sending their lambs to war, are they.” It wasn’t a question, though his voice tipped and slowed—he inches the blade higher, which brings you to your toes. Fear thundering through your veins, pushing down logic and courage, and anything that had kept your alive before.

You don’t know how to die—you wonder if it is some moment of acceptance that allows such a fate. You know that if you close your eyes, you’d feel the cold blood on your cheeks, and Anya’s small hands cupping your face as you died. Tumbling clumsy words falling from your lips—but it wasn’t you. Neither was it you who had stopped your loud metal cart in the center of a towering forest of metal and glass—burning clouds chased across the sky, and harsh boiling winds poured through streets. People screamed, everyone died—even you. Until you lived again.

“I’m not a lamb.” You don’t know how your voice doesn’t shake, but you maintain the detached tone you’d practiced quietly into the fire—when it was your turn on watch. “I’d much rather be a horse.” With a sharp rotation, and a bark of manic laughter, the herd of stallions start and rear. You’ve been around stubborn animals your whole life—beast and monsters that’d stomp you into the ground if you weren’t careful. The ice nation warrior stumbled backward, just barely avoiding a set of hooves. You’re not moving away, you’re moving toward the largest of the animals—he pulls the carts because he bucks anyone who’s tried to saddle him.

He fights, dancing in a tight circle, but you match him, sure in a way you can’t understand—like you’ve done this before, like he could recognize the bright intentions in your eyes. You turn him toward the full moon and swing onto his wide back, fingers curled into the coarse hair of his midnight colored mane. You see the red blood of the ice warrior’s head against the broken gate—his gaze vacant and upturned. His lonely set of footprints drag through the snow—a quiet man with only a short blade and a threat. A scout. Your monster is the first out of the gate, only half controlling his direction—not through camp, which is now loud with activity, but back the way the man had come. To the east, toward the half frozen river—a quick running thing that was foolhardy on the coldest of nights.

You try to quell his gallop, but the beast has his own direction, his own desire, and he wishes to run—churning up snow and flying past bare trees, you don’t know if you’ve ever been more scared. Or more alive. Both hands curl into his mane, and you spy the herd of war horses close on your steed’s hoofs—of course, he was their lead. He banked sharply and broke into an open field—snow was falling, and you can make out the gathering specks of torch light. A hundred, a thousand, a million—it seems unnecessary to count past a handful. Especially when you’re riding right toward them—war horses don’t fear fire, and are trained to charge enemy lines.

The first sharp crack of your mount’s hooves makes you hunch closer to his back—another, louder this time. The river. You can practically hear it rushing beneath the snow covered ice. The herd is weakening the ice, threatening it in such a way that you don’t think you’ll make it to the other side. The first few warriors throw spears, shattering the breast plate of two horses—their thousand pound bodied crashing ungainly to the ground, and the ice spiders outward. You want to feel remorse, but your mind is sharp—tracking the shaking lines of snow, and with effort, you bank your monster to the right, toward the harshest crack of ice. You trample men who try their luck with blades and arrows, and it isn’t until a glancing blow curls against your beast’s side that he rears and you roll from his back.

Shoulder blades curl in pain, and you just roll out of the way of a dancing hoof—you need to move, you need to keep going. Ducking below a wild swing, you shove a foot into a man’s chest, pushing his back enough that you can wretch his blade from the fracturing ice, and slam it two handed through the pale leather pelt of his armor—his eyes are green. Like your fathers. Like yours. He would be your kin had you been raised like a normal northerner. You think you cry louder than he does, your eyes wide, your mouth worrying sounds that didn’t belong in a warrior’s throat—but you aren’t a warrior, are you? You’re just pretending—you’re always pretending. Shoving yourself backward and back toward your panicked horse, you clamber back onto the beast’s back and shoot for the opposite shore—half the herd had been downed, and with each equine body thumping into the loosening ice, it began to break.

Large fissures raced under the scattering army, chaos rolling through already shattered ranks as men began falling beneath the ice—as large disks of what had once been solid ground upended—tossing entire groups into the frozen coffin that the river had become. Ducking your body low, a bloody sword tucked close to your side, you imagine you’re going to die—that no one will really know what happened this night. A tragedy that saved your kin—the men and women who you care about, despite the claps to the back of the head when you miss a block, or the ridiculous tasks you’re asked to do just because they say so.

No one calls you _heda_ , no one is soft—no one treats you like a wounded animal. Just a thick headed girl who stumbled into a war she’d pretended her whole life didn’t exist.

The hard sound beneath your beast’s hooves grounds you, straightening your spine, and tightening the grip on his mane. The pilfered sword is raised, and with a control that seems only possible because of the quiet, you turn to face the river from this opposite shore. Its madness, the trashing bodies between the dancing isles of ice are somehow quiet—very few manage to balance on the moving drifta, and there are no more horses. They’d all slid lifelessly below the quick current. The fast moving water dragging men beneath the unbroken ice, and you can see the feeble scratches of dying men dig at the prison of their death.

What had once been an army, was now a graveyard, a moving, roiling pit of death that still held barely living men—trying to drag themselves out of the freezing water. You’re stupefied, until a blazing arrow punches through the skull of an ice nation warrior who had almost escaped—almost dragged himself to safety. You look to the opposite shore, to the tree line harboring easily a hundred of your kin, bearing torches and weapons glowing in the firelight. You want to yell at them to stop, to not kill the men who manage to escape the vicious water—but you don’t make a sound.

You are death.

* * *

The number is different each time someone tells the story. A dozen men, those who hadn’t reached the shore say with disdain—like they’d rather not be bothered with tall tales. A hundred is a common one, though it usually only begins that way—as the telling goes through the motions, reeling in their audience, more and more ice nation warriors get thrown into the water. Your teeth ache when you hear a thousand, something inside roiling and flinching away—unable to tolerate the possibility of just how many people you had killed. The boys you’d trained with whispered about how your whole back had been scarred with killing marks—too many to leave even an ounce of skin untouched.

It isn’t until almost a moon later that Gustus corners you in the pen that holds _Trikova_ —Shadow—the monster of a horse who had brought you safely across the river of death you’d created. You still see them at night—their skeletal fingers breaking through the ice and curling around your ankle, dragging you beneath the rushing water. It buffers at your ears, until you jolt awake too suddenly—equilibrium lost to the heartbeat in your ears and the ragged breath escaping your chest. You know that it isn’t a secret; you know that eyes linger on you when you ghost through the camp as it is broken down.

This battlefront has been won because of you—because you decimated their entire force in a single foolish night. Actual warrior’s clap you hard on the back and jeer cruelly at those dead under the ice—you just feel numb. Cold and untouchable, and dead despite the fact that you still live. The largest northern village offers you sanctuary—ChMond—and there is to be a celebration; revel and drink, music and dance. You can’t be part of that, you can’t glorify the death of so many. You are honored, your story murmured to people who couldn’t even fathom what a thousand dead men look like—they watch you with widened eyes. You are death.

“That is the commander’s horse.” Gustus is never particularly quiet, but you don’t hear him regardless; spinning with an outstretched arm, your father’s dagger held in a bruising hold. He is dressed in his best armor; his golden sash that is usually absent crosses his chest, and wraps around his waist. The metal of his armor is burnished, and the fabric of his clothes are washed. The kohl dragged down one of his cheeks is significant of something, and you wonder what. “None have been able to tame him since _heda_ ’s fight ended.” You squeeze your eyes shut, and press your forehead into the strong flank of this animal; another connection to a man so many insist that you are.

“You lot are _branwada_ with mounts,” you want to sound strong, but you haven’t spoken in days, and your throat is dry, “It shouldn’t be a surprise no one can ride him.” This horse was supposed to be your, he’d looking into your eyes and found something you still couldn’t locate. Your true self, whoever that is. Gustus walks closer as your dagger lower, and finally clatters to the ground. You feel the hot huff of air as the stallion gnaws on a braid of your hair.

“He is old and stubborn,” he agrees, though she has the feeling he’s placating her; he exhales and you hear him turn, like there is something yet to fight. Looking up, he is a broad shouldered barrier between you—and Anya. She hasn’t changed much in the seasons you’ve been gone, her face streaked with kohl, her armor grand and her jaw tight. She’s looking at you with some unknown emotion, one even you can’t pick apart—Gustus stands between you as if he doesn’t wish to move, doesn’t wish to allow this woman any closer. He’s protective; you’ve managed to miss it over the last while, the way he put himself in front of you, the way his hand lingers on the hilt of his blade.

“ _Gostos_ , she’s yours no more.” You don’t like the way she says it, like you’re something to be passed between them. You don’t know the silent conversation they’re having but Gustus clearly falters because he’s turning away. Stopping just before you with the softest eyes he’s ever offered you, his massive hand rests on your head and shoves you like he always does murmuring _gada_.

* * *

She watches you quietly. The fire of the hut splashing across her face, throwing her eyes into shadow so that you can’t make out the sadness that always lingers there. You hadn’t expected to see her again; you set out toward the furthest border, away from her capitol, the place you’d never belong. But here she is; sitting stiffly in her regalia, her hands tightly grasping a metal tin between them.

“You’re not him.” Unlike last time, she says it softly, like she doesn’t have the strength to believe it anymore. She’s looking for something, now you can recognize the darting eyes and the purse of her lips. “He was brave, and dangerous, and hopeful.” You’re sitting on the edge of a bed of furs, body curled inward because your layers had been removed—taken from you and you’re left in next to nothing with the woman who commanded everyone.

“They say you killed a thousand men,” she doesn’t grin like everyone else when she says this, if anything the sadness in her eyes deepens and she moves closer to you, her knees hitting the ground and she seems more human like this. Looking slightly up at you with sad eyes. Her fingers are cold when she grasps your wrists and turns your forearms upward. She reminds you of your father the night you asked him if he thought you a sheep—he’d been sad, and resigned. Like despite everything he’d hoped for, you would never quiet be what he wanted—or expected.

“I don’t see hope in you.” Your eyes spark and your spine straightens, because this wasn’t what you’d expected—you expected her to mock your prowess as a warrior, about how easily she’d toss you against wall and to the ground. But she didn’t question your bravery or danger; just your hope. “You’re so small, and already impossibly broken—and you don’t even realize.” Your lips purse because you don’t like that word, _broken_. You jerk to pull away from her, but even despite the season of training you’d undergone, she is still so much stronger than you.

You thrash and fight, eventually catching her in the hard armor with a bare foot—you feel satisfaction when she releases you, but you know she’d done it of her own accord. You’re heaving breaths, and crouched on the far side of the bed.

“I’m not _broken_.” You’re not some toy that had been discarded, not something _less_ because you weren’t a dead man, not something _unwanted_ because you’d been a man’s apprentice, and not his daughter. Maybe you were making her point, whatever it was—but tears are catching in your lashes, and they gather threatening to fall. “I’m whole. I’m whole. I’m—,” you can’t talk anymore because your narrow chest is buckling under the weight you’d been trying to hold for days. A thousand dead men linger in the corners of the room, looking at your with your father’s green eyes and heads tips slightly to the side. Asking you _why_.

Your vision is blurry, and at first you struggle against the cold hands pulling at your wrist. Thrashing and twisting, but when you’re curled under a delicate chin, wet cheeks pressed into a warm neck, you stop. Sobbing silently into Anya’s shoulder, fingers trying to find purchase in the fabric of her clothing. Fingers curling and tightening as you shatter. She’s murmuring useless sounds in your ear, quiet and soothing, and you should be mortified, but you can’t be anymore more than you are now. Tired, and drowning, and lost.

“I have you, _strik heda_.” Little commander. You don’t want to be this person they’re telling you that you are, but you can’t fight it anymore. You can’t pretend to be anything else. Maybe you are broken. But the way Anya sooths fingers through your hair makes you believe that maybe you can be fixed. Mended, like a broken bone—something that is stronger for the damage caused.

* * *

“You bear the weight of your people.” She’d told you to close your eyes, worrying fingers smudged in kohl over your eyelids and up to your brow—she’d commented on how the shadows gathered below your eyes to darkly. How that had to be hidden. The commander did not show such common weakness; she stroked blackened fingers over the sleepless marks and made them a part of your armor. “You’ve existed for a thousand years, and will for a thousand more.” Her marked fingers trail off into your hair, and you fuss for a moment, only to be stilled by a strong grip on your chin.

“Of all born, you were chosen. And the spirit is never wrong.” Why had it been you? Opening your eyes, she seemed taken aback, as if she was seeing you for the first time. She’d taken the time to buckle and belt your into ceremonial armor that was perfectly tailored to your body—aged leather, and bronze metal. Battle worn cloth and time tested gauntlets. Your feet seemed small and delicate when slid into metal rimmed boots. “We were— _I_ was supposed to find you, I was supposed to keep you safe until you could bear this weight.” This is why she always looks sad—not only because the man she loved with all her heart was dead, but because she had failed you. She had promised to find you, and she hadn’t—and you’d gotten by on your own without her.

“It isn’t so heavy.” This weight, because it feels like it had always been there—if not on your shoulders, in your soul, in places you couldn’t reach, but knew existed.

Dragging three fingers down either of your cheeks she steps back as you stand—the armor is heavy, and it weighs you down. But this isn’t war, this is ceremony; this is what Anya had postponed at the capitol because you hadn’t been ready. Because you hadn’t belonged at the capitol, and you never would. In the shadows cast by the trees, and the glow of the enormous bonfire; you were presented to the people.

“ _Leksa kom gouthru, en trimani._.” That is who you are now—Lexa of the path, and forest. You didn’t have a village, at least not yet, but you were somehow expected to know what these people needed. The firelight dances of the bronze of your armor, and the bright crimson of your cape, it drapes down your chest, and across your back. Gustus and Anya stand behind either of your shoulders, towering in their height and importance. The warrior’s you’d spent the last seasons with look at you like they’ve never seen you before. Marked for command, spine straight—with the hidden aid of Anya’s hand, forcing your shoulders back—and face impassive.

“ _Geda_ ,” your voice was quiet in comparison to all those gathered, season warriors and front line fighters. But they quiet, like a command had been issued—they search the green of your eyes, lost in the black of your painted armor. Looking for their commander. Pulling out your father’s wooden handled knife, you flip it one time arrogantly. “ _Ai jus ste yun_.” Gustus had told you the ritual, what was needed—and though your hand shook, you grabbed the blade of the dagger, and pulled. Crimson spilled from between your fingers, the torn skin gaped when you raised the hand to show the utter red of your palm.

“ _Heda_ ” They chanted, the word getting louder, becoming a single voice as you pull your bloody fingers across your face. Red mixing with black, your vision dancing, but both Anya and Gustus kept you upright unnoticed to all gathered.

Blood must have blood—they spilled their blood for you, and in turn. Your blood belonged to them.


	3. Perpetuating the violence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Perpetuating the violence.” You throw at Anya, knowing she doesn’t know what the word means—you’d spent all night looking for the proper word to describe it. The constant and endless bloodletting that was drawing your people thin—too thin with the carnivorous mountain waiting to gnaw on their carcass.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter three! This story is just kind of doing it's own thing at this point, and I'm letting it. I'm just proud that I haven't given up on second person by now; I was sure I would have called it quits a sentence into the second chapter. Enjoy!

You train not because you want to master the sword or the spear, but because you’ve never known how to stay down—never been as tethered to the ground as all those around you. You’re the trees and the sky, waterfalls and cliff edges; when your legs are swept from beneath you, it doesn’t matter the blood or bruises; you will find your feet. When a tooth is knocked from your mouth, you kick it spitefully in the dirt, losing it in the weeds at the edge of the arena—when your nose is broken twice over you forego medical attention because you have to try again—when your shoulder catches an arrow that shouldn’t have been shot in the first place you stagger to your feet for only a moment—before kissing the dirt hard enough to worry about the rest of your teeth.

Anya is one part the mother you never had, and every other part a warrior bent on your end—bending you until you’ve broken so many times, that you’ll no longer be surprised. “Like a stallion,” she’d said once when boxing your ears in hand to hand combat—spinning in close and cuffing you until there was a ring that lasted days. The other generals—Gustus and Indra—worry for your safety in the hands of your predecessor’s second. Indra is a hard woman with vicious eyes, but she has a son your age, who grins at you widely when you can sneak away from your beatings—you think she’s a good mother, because her son is respectful and bright, he is happy and passionate. His dark, dark eyes are human in ways you are unfamiliar with—in a world of serpentine merchants and hardened warriors—and you worry that one day that won’t be so. That he’ll realize that the world is exactly what the world will be.

“The people need their _heda_ ,” the flat end of a blade howls past your ear, as you duck just in time—rolling away and coming up into a crouch. “Not a _raun sheidgeda_ —a dreamer.” She does that, insult you in your native tongue, and then promptly translate—so that next time she can say it in English. You still have no grasp for the language, massacring it as horribly as you used to with Enrick—the syllables turn on your tongue before they ever trip out of your mouth.

“Maybe we need a dreamer,” You don’t dodge this strike, the flat of the blade glancing off your shoulder, which only makes you raise your own blade in a defensive posture—she’s faster, larger and more skilled. But she’s used to fighting warriors, and children who wish to be warriors. You’re a sparrow on your worst days, and a conqueror on your best—and every day between? A silver tongued wolf. “You’ve been fighting the same wars for a thousand seasons, aren’t you tired?” You’re tired—so tired—but Anya’s eyes brighten, and her lips curl like she’s about to show you a lesson you hadn’t expected.

She shifts gracefully and lunges, blade extended and shoulder set—you tumble into the ditch you’d been herding yourself toward, and catch her ankles with the dulled reaper’s hook tether to your belt. She doesn’t trip, she’s too skilled for that, but the hesitation is just enough to surge upward and land a solid blow to the sharp line of her cheek. You think skin bursts—but the blood might be from your own knuckles, or from where she smashed her forehead into yours.

“We won’t tire, until we’ve won.” She rolls you to the side, and your limbs are tactless and loose—your vision blackened and your eyes rolled back. But that silver string tied around your heart, which strengthens your spine and squares your shoulders won’t let you stay down. Not even when the blood leaks out of your nostrils like a waterfall—another break. Staggering, faltering, and impossibly stubborn. You might be mistaken when you see the pride in Anya’s eyes when you sightlessly scoop back up your blade—you don’t miss, however, the grin on Gustus’ face or the cheer from Indra’s son.

“Won what?” What would the reward be? More land that already belonged to other clans, more people who were loyal to other leaders—there was nothing to win but pride. And you have no time for pride. It kills quietly behind other fickle reasons, the true devil in pretty words and unspoken disdain. “They’re like you. Tired—hungry and dying.” You don’t think Anya’s supposed to wobble like that, but everything else in your vision is lurching side to side—but your feet are moving. Stupidly, haltingly, stubbornly.

“They’re nothing like me.” It’s a snarl, and you can see the exact moment she remembers holding you as you died—no, it isn’t you. You can’t tell her she is wrong, that you’ve seen the people in all the clans—spent nights in their villages and broken break with their elders. Because she’s only seen battle fronts and slaughters, she’s seen the worst—in the same way that a dead man and a dying man are so fundamentally different. One, you can do nothing about—it has already happened. The other is visceral and present, current and captivating—a change happening right before the eyes.

This ground that she holds so dear is dying—you plan to change that.

* * *

She’s your English tutor, and so much smarter than you—the spirit had obviously chosen wrong, because Costia would be able to sooth a rattled viper with just a smile. You know she handles you, you can’t miss the placating tones or the diversions, but you don’t mind—because the light in her eyes is captivating and you would wish the world if only to catch another glimpse.

You fumble over words you’ve practiced all night and could recite in your sleep—just to hear her laugh. She’s your senior by two summers, and has lived in the capitol her whole life—barely acquainted with the forest beyond the gates. The only knowledge she has of the world is from her picture books; dull laminated illustrations that hardly do the world justice. She says she has no desire to travel, but you see the wanderlust in her rich eyes. You wish suddenly that you had been paying attention when she’d tried to teach you the long English words that had seemed unnecessary—something that could adequately describe the color of her eyes.

You draw her the mountains first, your fingers smudged with charcoal and pilfered pencils from the war room. You’d always had a decent hand at art, a useless hobby that you’d paid no mind because it didn’t sell product, and now—it didn’t win wars. But it made Costia smile, and that seemed more important—it made your heart skip, and rush, and you couldn’t talk half the time. But she never seemed to mind. Next were the plains—wide and unforgettable, golden in the summer, waving with each strong breeze. You tell her of how you could lose whole carts in the tall golden grass, and how you’d have to spend hours looking—it had been a horrible bother at the time, but it seemed silly in retrospect.

“You’re ridiculous, Lexa.” That, right there, is your favorite thing. How she says your name—warm and accented, and you know that while she is from Polis, her parents must originate from the south. She never calls you by title, never hints that you are anything but an abysmal student; she is the calm in the storm that has become your life.

“No, I’m dashing.” It’d been a word Costia had drawled to mock— _dashing_ , something you were not when you trailed mud behind you into her immaculate home. She’d rolled her eyes and promptly ordered you outside, where a bucket of cold water had been upended over your head. You sputter and scowl, but she laughs—bells and songbirds, and even though you haven’t said this out loud, you face heats and your eyes advert. This world, her world, isn’t yours—you don’t know how to be civilized and proper, you’d been wild your whole life. Groomed to be a bandit and a scoundrel—and for the first time you’re ashamed of it.

Before, it had always been a sense of pride you could lean on—you had seen the world, you had half a dozen names and in the end, you’d named yourself—you had men three times your age in your employ—and now, that all seem ridiculous. Because in the capitol you are suddenly that bare footed child in too starched clothing that _business men_ turned their nose up at. You were an orphan and a cutthroat; amoral and gray.

//

“What do you see?” She’s smiling, set out on her back, arms sprawled wide, and you find yourself looking at her instead of the blue expanse above you. You don’t have much of a mind for birds and clouds—your kinship with the sky in in your hollowed out sparrow bones; a child who had been told to _fly away_. Costia looks to the sky for frivolous things—she looks for pirate ships and lions, for heroes and demons. She could lay for hours looking into the fading light of the afternoon. She often prompts you to join in, to search for figures in the clouds—but they always just look like hunks of fluff.

So you look at her instead, because just as readily as Costia loved the sky—you love her.

“ _Skai_ ,” she’s shoving your shoulder—imagining you are the little sparrow you’d told her stories of. Sky, that is what she calls you, and you cannot think to ever correct her—to tell her that the commander doesn’t get _nicknames_. “What do you see?” Costia loves the sky, and you love her.

“Pretty.”

You gape, mouth open and scramble to cover because she looks to you with curiosity—and you are _not_ looking at the stupid clouds, and their ridiculous shapes. You are looking at her—at how her beautiful dark skin catches the light, and her copper colored eyes are priceless—even to your merchant soul.

“The sky—pretty.” You’re losing your English, the words typing together, and you are hot and uncomfortable, and when you shift to look away, her fingers catch your chin. Guiding you back to look at her—she’s smiling; wide and bright. You’re captured, and she need only ask to know your secrets—and she’d have them.

“Beautiful.” She murmurs, and you furrow your brow—aren’t those similar words? Is she correcting your English—and then she’s kissing you. Softly, sweetly—her lips taste like berries, and you forget to close your eyes, and your hands remain paralyzed at your sides.

It isn’t until her hand smooths along your jaw that you finally kiss her back—your hands curl into her dark, thick hair, your body moving toward her without any conscious thought. You are a creature of action, after all.

“I like this game,” pupils blown, smile wide and stupid, “We should play again.”

* * *

_A one people_ —she tells you this isn’t proper grammar, but you don’t care. Your mind is churning, your heart kicking and this is wrought with possibility. You’d mentioned it in passing to Indra and the general had scoffed as respectfully as one could to their commander. “Impossible” the dark eyed woman had growled, before setting herself at the door and standing guard. But impossible was a word you don’t understand—because so much is simply so, because no one has tried. Twelve known clans, bordering so close together—fighting because they always had.

“It is—it is—ridiculous!” Costia smiles at your exasperate exhalation of the word, because you have not truly been part of these wars. You were neutrality, slipping over battlefronts without a thought to the blood being spilt—you were northern by blood, forest by calling, and Costia’s by heart. “A one people.” You like how that sounds—improper or not. It is a solid thought now, something that chews away at resolve to not act. When you end up on battlefronts—punching the tip of your blade through the young chests of warriors who don’t know why you fight either.

“Perpetuating the violence.” You throw at Anya, knowing she doesn’t know what the word means—you’d spent all night looking for the proper word to describe it. The constant and endless bloodletting that was drawing your people thin—too thin with the carnivorous mountain waiting to gnaw on their carcass. You know Anya can’t understand peace, can’t understand lines being erased, but you have so much trouble finding those lines to begin with.

* * *

“ _Skai_ ,” her breath hushes across the bare skin of your shoulder, your face pressed into the warmth of your pillow. She kisses the black ink curling across your shoulders and down your spine—small marks so close together they look solid. A thousand and one marks. You hum in response, body slack and sated; your heart prancing away as if often did when you were alone with Costia. “If anyone can—it’s you.” She doesn’t have a voice on the council, she lingers at the back, and no one asks her to leave—simply because they know their commander wants her there.

“Can what?” You can’t think of doing much of anything, except maybe sleep—or pull this beautiful woman back into your body and forego the idea of sleep entirely. But when you turn to face her, her dark eyes are soft—but serious.

“Peace.” She says it simply, but there is no native tongue for _peace_. “A one people.” Her finger trails along your collar bone, delicately tracing the kill marks that exist there—so many now, some fresh, some faded with the seasons. “You don’t belong to just the trikru.” She doesn’t meet your eyes, but you’re curious. “You belong to all of them.”

She often spoke like this—the possession of the commander a firm idea in her mind, that a single person belonged to an entire population. You just want to belong to her. The clans can have the commander, but she can have Lexa— _Skai_ , whatever she wishes to call you.

You’re tired, and the warmth of her body makes it easy to loosely nod while closing your eyes—turning into her and pressing together.

* * *

You’re half asleep when she whispers, “ _Ain_ .” Mine.

You’ve been her’s since before she knew. “ _Yun_.” Yours.

* * *

Your generals are uncomfortable when you travel too far south, or north, or east, or west—they miss the forest and its familiarity. But this is home—traveling from outlaying village to outlaying village. These people are ones you recognize even if you can’t recall their names—they call to you,  _Sparrow_ and  _Lexa_ mingling together because in these far lands they can’t understand who you’ve become. They see your massive beast of a war horse, your ornate and impressive armor—and the deference of half a thousand warriors. You are their merchant girl, grown up and away.

But it is exactly because you don’t belong to anyone—but everyone—that this seems possible. You know their customs, even the obscure and outdated ones—your father had been charmed by old traditions. He collected them like some men did rings or daggers. As much as Costia mocks you—you are _dashing_ , a self-appointed queen proclaimed it so.

As your father collected out dated traditions—you collect clans. Tempting them with an open palm, but allowing they to see the close fist waiting for a refusal—there are whispers, talk that this isn’t their way. It was political and civil, and improper. But enough fall into line that the generals of the clans agree to disagree with their leaders.

Eleven out of twelve; they have offered fealty in loose terms. They have promised to think on it—that they _want_ it to be so, they just had to confer with their people.

You grow frustrated at night, fists clenched, and your worst traits threatening to spill out and away from your control. Costia rubs fingers into your tensing muscles until they loosen and you fall into her. “Be patient.” She will murmur against the shell of your ear, and you groan and fall silent.

You don’t want the violence to continue—you don’t want it to burden your people— _all of them_ —but it would be so easy. To cripple their defenses and swallow their villages whole—to devour them and refuse them their choice.

It isn’t until the ice clan refuses to meet that you realize that some enjoy their kingdoms set apart. The north—your homeland—is harsh and unusual to your generals, but you break through the mid-winter snowfall to settle at the border. You send missive that you wish to treat with their queen—self-appointed as she is—and she sends your messanger’s horse back with a body—without a head.

“Disrespectful!” Indra is incensed, and you can’t say you aren’t fuming—your grip is impossibly tight on your sword hilt, your other hand curled around the small figurine representing the queen.

“ _Shof op_ , Indra.” She stops, but you continue to glower at the board—your position has bled into your mind, your status assured in so many places—except here. Here it does not seem to matter that you are the commander, or that so many have already accepting this new landscape.

This queen wants her kingdom, and you will give her one chance to reconsider.

* * *

You don’t think anything of it when she does not join you in bed.

* * *

You are the commander, and you have lived a thousand lives—and died a thousand deaths. You knew how it feels to have your head held below water, until your lungs were full—how fire licked and danced beautifully up your body, charring your insides—how the wind howled past your ears, as the ground got ever closer—how metal was quiet when it slipped through your ribs, into your still beating heart.

You died so many times, you didn’t think it would bother you to add one more manner to your list.

But you’re still breathing, your heart has turned cold—but still beats.

Costia’s head looks up at you from the coarse sack presented by a smirking northern warrior—his hair white and his eyes blue. You try not to notice how the fear still lingered in eyes long since foggy and dead—eyes that had been rich and full of life, were now dull and cloudy.

“You wished to see her.” The ice nation man rumbled, too delighted in his wit to realize how much danger he was in. “Here she is. Well, part of her.”

He doesn’t know that he just sentenced his clan to death, that he has snapped the single cable that had kept your might from flattening the whole north. Her gentle caution had been what staved off your hungry frustration—a last step, to make eleven clans into twelve. To end these useless fights that had no cause—no reason.

He does not know that he has just given you a reason.

You will make twelves clans eleven, and your coalition will be complete—there will be no need to placate and sooth the ice clans self-proclaimed queen. You will raze their nation to the ground, as they had been trying to do to yours for lifetimes. You may have been born of the north, you may have lived your first five summers there—but it is foreign to you now, it can never be anything to you.

Because they killed Costia.

Sweet, bright, calm Costia who told you violence wasn’t always the answer—who promised that patience could win some of the hardest battles. Who held you after night terror, and told you that the dead couldn’t have you—that you were hers. You could not belong to them, because you were spoken for. Who speaks for you now?

“Your queen, I have a message for her.” Even you don’t like your tone; low and dull, rumbling like an animal where you had tried to be a person. You feel like a beast, a monster that has slipped their chain and slunk deadly into the night. You salivate at the thought of their blood, at how the snow will fall crimson and their capitol will burn—you are death, you are fire and smoke, you are their end

They just don’t know it yet.

“She.” Your hand shakes, a quiet shiver in the fingers as you gesture to the presented head. “Waged peace.” Costia wanted the lull between battles, when fields of flowers and walks to the beach were possible—she wasn’t a warrior, battle wasn’t etched into her bones and death into her skin. “And she is no more.” No more—it was such a neat way of saying dead. That some filthy mongrel had cleaved her head from her shoulders, and shoved it into a bag. You need her whole body, you need to put her to rest—these thoughts litter the darkness and ruin that is your mind.

“I wage war.” You are hell’s hound, you can feel the fire clipping at your heels, the screeching rattle of a thousand dead men—you are hardly human. A demon or a deity, and this man doesn’t realize it doesn’t matter which when you set upon his villages. On his families. On his friends. “And _you_ will be no more.”

On the rare nights that you allowed Costia to hold you, when you curled into her slightly larger frame, and inhaled the clean scent of her skin—she told you that you were a good person. That you had been forged by fate to be this person, but if given the chance—if given the _choice_ —you would be so very good.

But she was wrong. She is dead, and she was wrong—there is nothing good inside you, not anymore. You are hollow and cruel. Anya had said you were broken, so very broken, and now those jagged pieces would be turned outward—you would tear the world apart, just to see it bleed at your feet.

* * *

There had been whispers through the clans—how many warriors thought you weak for your methods. For speaking as often as fighting, for listening when your word was law. There are no whispers any longer—you send riders with messages to meet you in the northern keep—in this self-proclaimed queen’s castle. You tell them to ride swift, and ride sure, and see just what happened to those who thought you weak. You arrive at their capitol in the night—faces slashed black and blood running thick and hot through your veins—your guard is ever present, silent and sure footed. You are not human in that moment—you are hell’s hounds, glass jawed scoundrels and bitter bitten angels. Bright eyes set upon the keep with a hungry desire for destruction.

Your men had loved Costia too, in their own way—she reminded them of the things they left home for. Their wives and husbands, their parents and children. Those too soft for battle, who deserved this ground so much more than their blood soaked boots. They howled the night she was returned to you—a piece at a time. Their bays had echoed your own silent howls, your internal pain—their fists loud against their shields, their eyes bloodthirsty and alit. You was phantoms as you slip through towns already nestled for sleep—the candles smothered and the smoke from fires bitter in your mouth.

You don’t truly remember the carnage, it whispers in and out when you close your eyes at night—but you cannot actively recall the death of so many. It took only a dedicated handful, the hardest, truest warriors your clan has raised—lean dangerous men who would slit their own throat before questioning your orders. And this night of only a half moon, you slaughter a dynasty—digging blackened daggers into the tender throats of guards, and carving reaper’s hooks across the soft sides of servants. You have tried to learn peace, you have tried to have patience—but you are a bloody mongrel, and there was consequences, if they did not pay the price you offered.

When the quiet has won, and there wasn’t a life left in the fortress, you wait—sat upon a cold metal chair curled with the intricacies of a snow flake. It is delicate and ornate, and nothing like your own antler crafted throne—this is lavish and ostentatious, this is meant for royalty, not savages. This was why she thought she was better than you; she was civil and human, and thought you no more than a mongrel howling at the moon. But her pretty words and sour smiles could not win her this day; they could not sew shut the harsh smile of flesh across her neck, her head held on only by the thinnest scrap of skin.

Her imperial guard lay lifeless around, the cold air keeping them preserved as you waited—blood soaked and calm. You don’t know whose calm this is, because it is not yours. Maybe it is because you have truly died; that all this had simply been your exit from the world. Your spirit would go on to choose a more worthy host, and you could be with Costia—even if she was disgusted, even if she thought you no more than a mindless demon. When the self-appointed leaders of each of the twelve clans appear—even the wide eyed next in line for the ice clan—you don’t acknowledge them. You wonder if you should have taken this queen’s head completely—shoved it in a sack and tossed it into the sea so that she may never rest.

“This is how I wage war.” These hardened men and women can appreciate the brutality of this display, they can see the delight that still lingers at the corners of your eyes. They understand the line being drawn, and the penalty for stepping over it. “She refused my peace; so I did not give it to her.” In her absence your English is crisp, because there is no one to make laugh at your purposeful stumbles—you are a child king, on a throne of bones. And these mortal men will fear you—they will understand what it means to cross you, because they will have this room etched into their memory. You will be their leader, and their demon, and you no longer search for their love—for their _understanding_ —they will fear you more than any other desire they might have.

“I ask for fealty only once,” you stand, slight and bloody, sure footed and bright eyed. “—and this is what refusal looks like.” These stubborn men and women, these prideful creatures weigh their life, their land and their people against the copper price of independence. Your army is vast, it is hungry for war because you have been searching for peace—they must understand the hollow cheeked smiles of the tree people. Of the blood smeared woods clan—your loyal guard filters in from dark corners and empty doorways.

They kneel. In the end, they will always kneel, because you are the devil they know—you are the bright eyed demon that will treat them as well as you are capable. You father had put it so well once—men are sheep, even the strongest, even the bravest—but these sheep knew a wolf on sight, they simply preferred it to the unknown dark of night.

* * *

You don’t like fighting with Anya, not like this—not with words, and emotions, and everything that hurts but is bloodless. You’ve travelled far enough away that your raised voices won’t catch in the wind—won’t drift back to your people. The ones who watch you always now, their eyes lingering, and their head tilts differential.

“Do you plan to fight the world, _strik heda_? Make it kneel?” She’s sneering, towering over you because you refused to be baited at first—you hunkered down and stared out into the dark; waiting for the abyss to stare back. But she’s hit a nerve—raw and wounded, the one inside you say doesn’t exist. As if it isn’t festering and named— _Costia_.

“Isn’t this what you wanted, Anya?” You don’t know who you are right now—you’re little sparrow the scrappy apprentice, Lexa the mongrel wolf, _Heda_ the heartless commander—it is too hard to remember what Costia called you—other than ridiculous. “I’ve done the impossible; united the twelve clans, secured both borders and trade.” What more does she want from you; what more do you have to give?

“What happened to that stupid girl who wanted to dream?” A snap, you don’t actually plan to push her away by her collar, but the fabric is coiled in your fists before you realize.

“She grew up.” Harshly, horribly; you’d been so close to tipping the lines that divided, that set up invisible barriers. “She realized the world is exactly what the world is. And if you can’t change it, you control it.”

“Out of fear.” You can take her anger, you can take her disgust—but that sadness that always clings to her; that is in the curl of her shoulders and the slight shake of her fingers. Hands that suddenly were smaller than your own, curling over where your fists clench in her collar. “This world you made fears you.”

“They should!” Your seams are splitting, and the dark is spilling out; everything that you had kept inside because you were the commander. You were the foundation of a whole coalition. “In my world she wouldn’t have died—if I hadn’t been so _stupid_.” You’re breathing heavily—no, you can’t breathe at all, your lungs are expanding but the air inside your chest is spent and useless. You step away from Anya, trembling and disoriented. You can’t breathe, and you’re choking on your heart. Blood pounding away in your ears.

“Shh, shh, _strik heda_.” She’s cradling you, pulling you down to the ground, catching your eyes to give you an anchor. “Calm, Lexa.” She settles your hand on her chest, breathing slowly—in through the nose, out through the mouth. You can feel her heartbeat against your palm, strong and steady—you’ve matched her breathing, finally getting air. The black dots swimming away and you squeeze your eyes shut.

“I killed her,” It hadn’t been with your hands, but it might as well have been. “They tore her to _pieces_ because she was _mine_.” You would have traded places in a moment, would have taken all her pain and fear and tucked it away into your soul because she was too beautiful to feel those things. She was the _good_ in the world—the things that made peace seem possible.

“They wanted to break you,” to watch you crumble and pick apart your pieces; Anya sooths a hand through your hair, heedless of the tangles found within. “They didn’t realize you were already broken; that you are strong because of it.” Your pieces are sharp and unforgiving, a junkyard mongrel made of king’s gold and glass shards. Maybe you’d been born missing pieces, maybe that was why your parents didn’t want you—maybe you’d been chosen because you were somehow less than everyone else. Missing that _something_ that had made your father dangerous—but he couldn’t love, he hadn’t been able to even contemplate the mechanics of his heart.

“Love is weakness.” You’re hollow, sitting at the bottom of a pit, staring up at the sky above, and contemplating the sea the stars swim in. Somewhere far away where this world isn’t a smoldering ruin of a stupid girl and her idiotic dreams—the commander would make her world on the ashes of those dreams. Anya doesn’t disagree, but she holds you closer—foreheads pressed together.

* * *

At night, when you fall asleep, it isn’t the rattling bones of all those you had killed that keep you awake. No, it is the faint echo that you will no longer hear. A promise that will never be kept.

* * *

Just before you awake, you can still hear her. “ _Ain_ .” Mine.

And you always respond. “ _Yun_.” Yours.


	4. broken heart you'd inherited

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I saw you once.” The woman had said—and you can’t imagine how your presence at all stuck in her mind. Her eyes were mossy and tired, but she smiled at you—you, the person who had turned her away without thought

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I've been horribly busy at work, and hadn't any time to write recently. So I got a chance to write today, and more important; the desire to write, and this is what I came up with. I want to thank everyone for their comments; they mean so much to me. Since I have no true blueprint set out for this, I take everything you write into consideration; it lets me see things I may not have considered the initial time. I don't know what each scene is going to be until I start writing it, so I would love ideas. Anything you've wondered about, or had a desire to see; I can't promise to include everything, but I love the texture of this would, and want you to love it too.
> 
> Someone asked in the comments if I would be continuing into the actual timeline of the 100; I plan to, yes. This Lexa here is still a ways away from the one in the show; this one is still fumbling on what it means to be _Heda_ , even if she thinks she does. She has a little maturing to do yet.
> 
> As always, feel free to message me on tumblr at **civilorange**. 8)

You’re a child. You don’t realize when you’d come to this conclusion, but it is somehow the most obvious, and hardest epiphany you’ve reached. You’ve refused labels from the world, and slapped your own on in their place—sparrow, wolf, conqueror, demon, commander, deity— _adult_. They are merely words, and somehow you’d put so much behind each, that at some point you’d begun to believe your own lies. You’d fallen for the same half-truths as the rest of the world, and it left you no better for it.

Your shoulders are squared because it is expected of you—not because it was your natural posture. Your spine is firm and rigid because you try to be noble, and regal, and every other word fawning young seconds chitter out as you pass—not because you’ve learned how to carry the weight on your shoulders.

They look at you like the deity you sometimes believe yourself to be—not realizing that you are the same age. Not yet fifteen summers. They are swift, and agile, and resilient—they dodge, and strike, and parry—but they also smile, and laugh, and play. They are somehow seconds and children both—old enough for war, as is expected of the people from the forest. But young enough to not be burdened with the complications beyond the clash of metal and the drip of blood— _ramifications_ , that would be the word Costia used.

“ _Heda_ ,” they all stop their routines; their dull bladed weapons heavier than an actual sword or spear, their arms tightened with the effort to hold them up. They are dark eyes, and their faces dirty—their lips flattening in an attempt to appear serious. Because to them—you are _other_. You are someone to impress, someone to be less themselves around. When had your face become so common to the people in this obscure village, that you need not a crimson sash or signature sword to define who exactly you are?

“ _Seken_.” Their mentors were across the village, harping over borders and skirmishes and bandits—you have arrived with your warriors to ease their burden. To lift the strain on such a place. A village that would typically be left to fend for themselves—so far east that it is virtually unknown. A single desperate mother had rode her malnourished horse three days—hard and without rest—until the beast had collapsed at the gates of Polis. She sought an audience with the commander; with her leader. With _you_.

You had waved away the request without listening to it—without even seeing her, less than concerned for some backwater village that could in no way further your thirst for blood—you’d reined in the north, only to set your sights on the mountain that shadowed all twelve of your bristling clans. One of your guards had gleefully thrown the woman out onto her back, telling her that the concern belonged to her village’s warriors—not _the_ commander.

You met her by chance three days later—in the dense wood, hunting to ease the weight that had settled into the corners of your mind. She was weak and dejected, her body sprawled against the trunk of a tree. You’d knelt to offer her your water skin—tipping it to horribly chapped lips.

“I saw you once.” The woman had said—and you can’t imagine how your presence at all stuck in her mind. Her eyes were mossy and tired, but she smiled at you—you, the person who had turned her away without thought. “You were going east, toward the great water—to see the _whetkru_.” It had been months ago, but you could recall the unseasonable rain that had held for the majority of the trip.

Still, you don’t speak.

“A one people.” _Ah won kru_. This meant something to her—this farmer, or healer, or tailor. This woman who did not know the weight of a sword, or the heft of a spear. Who had most likely lost family to those very weapons—to the whetkru pushing viciously on borders they should leave be. A one people.

You sat with her quietly, still not having said a thing, but when she stood to leave—though her gait unsteady and her feet not leaving the ground when she walked, she wasn’t going to beg. She wouldn’t prostrate herself before you and plead for her village—and that was your people. She would not blame the world, for being exactly what the world was.

But hadn’t you promised to change that?

You’d seen her next six nights later—fifteen of your most promising warriors. Young men and women who did not have many great battles to their name—but the spirit and passion that truly counted. This was not a battle for your generals and gold sashes—this was for those who could see the promise in a village forgotten. Those from outlying towns that somehow, by chance, ended up in the capitol.

Like you.

“You asked for help from your _heda_.” You dip your head, hand to your heart—this woman showed you something; the lesson was that you still had much to learn. You did not know all, and you did not hold the lion’s share of grit and perseverance.

She’d hugged you then—throwing her thin brittle arms around your shoulders much like your mother had years ago—her lungs wheezed, but her tears were of gratitude, and not sadness. She simpered, “machof, machof” into your ear softly until a village elder had softly pried her away.

* * *

 

“ _Heda_ ,” one of the seconds was peeling away the skin of his fruit—he was your senior by a few seasons, not a full set, but enough that he had appointed himself the undeclared leader of his _gonakru_. He had eyes that may have been green, if they weren’t so muddied with light brown; his hair was buzzed, and the first sign of facial hair was stubbing his jaw. “ _Ah yu que—_.” You’re half-way through a similar fruit—and you also hate the skin, but gnawing through it is a testament to your leadership prowess—somehow this had panned out in your mind.

“English,” you chide, voice low and crisp; though you still hardly have the handle on the language that many of your generals do, you’ve grown comfortable with the foreign tongue. Too easily you slip into your native when agitated or upset, but you’ve been working on that—not the language barrier, but feeling anything to cause it.

His lips purse, and his eyes chase away, but you can wait—the sun is about to kiss the horizon, and all the seconds are sprawled on the ground. In varying shades of bruised and bloodied; Karman—the self-proclaimed leader—is a little less bruised, but he seems unsettled for whatever he is about to ask you. It makes you nervous in a way that war councils and battle fronts can’t—because this is human, and ordinary, and calm—and you don’t do any of those. Especially not with backwater seconds who don’t know the etiquette of the capitol, or how to properly converse with their commander—they grovel and bow, and watch you with reverent eyes—but it is somehow different.

“I am to be _gona_ ,” he is confident, but you quietly murmur _warrior_ , and he nods with a furrowed brow—looking stormy and brooding. You might’ve thought him attractive, but in some sideways manner you look at him and think _child_ , though he has technically seen more life. “A warrior. Rickard says much about it, very much—but I was—thinking. I think on this—,” he doesn’t want to say what he is thinking on, his eyes already looking away like he’s already said to much.

“Think on what, Karman?” You want to help him, because for all your mentors, there was so much you had to figure out on your own—so much that went unanswered until it hit you square between the eyes. Knocked you back, forcing you to concede ground—that was something that could no longer happen. You had to stand steady, you had to take the brunt of the hit and ignore all those bloodless wounds.

“Her name is Sare.” _Her_. You had been expecting worries about death, about pain and killing—but this was like hot knives plunging through your well-worn armor and into the pumping mess that is your ruined heart. He isn’t looking at you, so he can’t see how your jaw works as your teeth mesh together—your golden molar notched into the gap where you’d had another molar knocked from your mouth.

“She is a _fisa_ —healer.” His English is getting heavier, and you lean so slightly forward to truly pick up his words. “Can—am I—can I love her?” He glances at you, suddenly truly looking like the child you think of him as—eyes wider, too much white showing. Before his own jaw clenches and he turns to look at the other seconds beginning to show signs of life—moving sluggishly in the setting sun.

Love is weakness, this truth has nestled in your chest like a sickness, chewing away at your merchant heart—gnawing away at whatever you may have been able to harbor after your soul rotted with Costia’s corpse. You hold your silence for long enough that the others have joined you on the incline, nervous and uncertain—picking at the scattered fruit on the ground. They wore dirty brown shirts and torn pants—you feel overdressed in your armor and crimson sash, with your war paint and weapons.

“If you are able,” this hope could unravel them, it could carve out their hearts and leave them as monsters wearing masks of their own faces. Pretenders in their own skin. But had you the chance to never meet Costia—to never make her laugh, or smile, or cry—you wouldn’t have taken it. You would hold this pain eternally for the time you had her—for the hurricanes and the sunshine. You would shatter forever, to have been whole for those few days.

“If you are able,” the repetition seems necessary, your voice pitching lower, more of the north slipping into the rumble of your words—northern born, a foreigner to this eastern children. “Hold her close, be hers—as she is yours. Love is—love can change you, if you let it.”

You are shattered, a mongrel with broken teeth and chipped claws—but for only a few days you’d belonged to someone who wished to save you from that. To hold you close, and nurse your pain like it was her own. You are the commander who united the twelve clans—despite rebellion, despite the blood still being spilled—you are legend, you are feared. But it had been Costia’s dream—a girl who had loved more than any you have ever known, who could hold all your people in her heart. Who had taught you how to do the same.

“Sometimes for the better,” you stand—layers of war worn fabric rustle and fall into place, your hand settling on the hilt of your blade. From this hill, the endless blue expanse of the _whetse_ seemed foreboding—still far downhill, still miles and miles away. But it was swallowing—it devours the horizon and spat the sun out every morning.

You rustle the hair of the youngest _seken_ , easily the youngest of the group—she grins up at your with a mouth full of fruit as you turn to walk away. You can hear them climbing over each other to talk, to whisper secrets and youthful truths that have yet to be tested by the world. When you are too far away for them to hear you, you finish.

“Or for the worst.”

* * *

You are _heda_. This fact is so ingrained into your people that many don’t even pause to think on what it means for one person, to be all people—to have a hundred lives, and ten-thousand heartbeats. Anya is an extraordinary warrior—she is swift action and patient thought, she is everything that you are meant to be—and somehow can’t. Because when you look at her—solid, and beautiful, and confident—you can only see her at eleven years of age. Small and dirty, from the gutters of Polis. You see her through the eyes of a dead man, and you are unable to shake it.

Everything has layers—sometimes one, sometimes a thousand. Every life you have lived sits in your chest and influences the world—a phantom reality placed over the truth. Polis is the worst—because you can see structures and grandeur that simply don’t exist anymore—towering steeples that reach toward the sky, perfectly square pools of placid reflective water. The commander’s palace used to have a grand dome, and imperial pillars and arches—what remains are chalk white debris piled high at the edges of the training grounds. Much of it remains, you can tell, but it is still somehow impossibly different.

Your heart aches because you can see this world before the bombs dropped—you can see green pastures, and sprawling cities. Metal machines that flew down flattened black paths faster than any horse could hope to manage. You’d caught glimpses of it since you were a girl—but only flashes; just before you closed your eyes at night, and as you woke in the morning. With the seasons they darken and solidify—seem almost as real as the world you exist.

You have never held the weaponry of the _maun men_ , but if you really think—you can feel the cold metal tight in the curl of your fingers; the barrel hot from quickly erupting rounds. It couples with the remembered race of your heart, and the sluggish weep of blood from too many wounds. You were a warrior then too—but instead of leather and metal, you wore soft black fabric, with a glinting golden shield proudly displayed on your chest.

You have a thousand memories in this regard—chapters of so many lives, sometimes you forget which one is your current one. Anya does not know to prepare you for this—she is strong, and sure, and true—but she is not a scholar, she does not know _heda’s_ legacy as readily as those tucked away into the backs of libraries.

The uneven ground you walk isn’t revealed until a fever levels you in the middle of a training session—blade sharp and armor forgotten, you parry and twist away from one of your better warriors. It has been many bouts since anyone has been able to down you; but everything seemed somehow brighter, and darker. The colors bleeding together like a painting left in the rain, mixing and smearing. You shift to block his swing, and miss completely—not even close, and the sharp tip of his weapon digs into the clatter of your shoulder.

Unsteady and bleeding, your face pallid and sweating, the fingers holding the sword loose enough to allow it to fall to the ground. His startled face bleeds away into someone else’s—a hard woman with unforgiving eyes and a wide smile. She looks like a jackal, a scavenger who grew tired of waiting for others to die—her fingers were red with your blood, her blade forgotten in your chest. The hilt just beside your glinting golden badge; you’re talking, saying words that don’t belong to you—except…they do. Or they _had_.

“Rebecca,” your voice doesn’t wrap around her name the same way it had back then—when you had been Marcus Sullivan, chief of police for Washington DC—a man unfortunately in love with the woman who would end the world. “This isn’t—you can’t—we’ll _all_ die.” Your voice is too young to grasp the weathered life of a man at the end—too close to school the death woven into his words.

Rebecca smiles, her bloody warm hands clasping your cheeks and pulling you unsteadily closer—there is a shrill noise in the distance, a whistle of something massive falling past your ears.

“Marc,” you should have noticed that there had never been love in her eyes; that they only grew foggy and faraway because she couldn’t really see _you_. “You’re a good man. There’s no place for good men in my world.”

You’re swaying—no, Marcus is—but you _are_ Marcus, except you aren’t. When the past falls away from your eyes, you feel like no one—because he had died, and his spirit had chased away to someone else. Like it would for you one day—when you died, and someone else became you.

“ _Heda_!” The hurried voice was muffled by the rush of blood in your ears, and the wavering colors of the world. Even with arms heavy like lead, you shoved the hands tentatively touching your shoulders away—you stagger backwards until there is a wall there to hold you steady.

Your vision swims, and Rebecca’s back; three meters away, her gray eyes surprised, and her mouth ajar. “I may’ve loved you, babe.” Your mouth drawls around the words, and you’re smiling—cold metal solid in your grip, the gun light and you know instinctively that only two bullets remain. “But I wasn’t stupid enough to trust you—the mountain is closed. Locked up tighter than a virgin’s thighs,” You’re coughing up blood, and the effort it takes to breath lets you know a lung has collapsed.

You think you’ve just died of a broken heart. Rebecca screams—shrill and mad, and when she rushes toward you, there is no hesitation in how your finger pulls the trigger. _Pop, pop_. Two bloody holes appear in the sky-blue fabric of her shirt; weeping crimson in slow falls. She takes two steps closer, her ankles twisting in her ridiculously high heels—and when she falls, you do too.

Maybe it had been Marcus Sullivan’s broken heart you’d inherited.

* * *

When you wake in the infirmary, it isn’t Anya who sits beside your bed—it is a man who has clearly been gray longer than you’ve been alive. It is rare to see someone so aged—the forest is an unforgiving place, but when you take in his draped fabric and the academic hunch to his back, you know he’s a scholar—a _prafsa_ . Someone who holed himself in the ruined husks of libraries and try to piece together the world from _before_. Someone who keeps the past’s secrets because sometimes it is better to start over—sometimes there were no lessons to be learned, and just horrible truths that everyone could do without.

You are _heda_ , and you could demand these truths—they belong to you, more so than most, but you’ve never been particularly invested in the past. Only glimpses of decisions that needed to be known, so that they may not be made again—Anya knows most tactics of war that had not panned out well, and she is delighted to drawl them while cuffing your ears.

“I know you are awake, _heda_.” This man says your title with a soft respect, his eyes are milky and unfocused—sightless. His smile is brittle, but kind, and his skin is white as old bone—from ages spent in dark rooms, tucked over ancient pages of worlds no longer.

“I’m so sorry,” his foggy eyes somehow find yours, and his crooked hand covers yours where it rests on the bed. “So _very_ sorry.” And he tells you a story; one that had been resting in his chest since you’d been found at the gates of Polis. Since the temporary governing body of the trikru had decided how to manage the situation your mere existence had caused. It was the truths that had always rested between the words spoken—between the dirty rumors that flitted through markets and far off villages. And this old man, with his bridle of guilt, tells you things that explain away the dark spots in your mind.

“Do you know who _heda_ is?” Anya, Gustus—and even Indra, have asked you this question many times. It always feels like a trick, like wool had been pulled over your eyes, and while you stare at the sudden dark—you’re merely told it is night.

“Me.”

“For now,” it doesn’t sound like a bad thing with the exhale on the syllables—his English is accented, proper and strange. He speaks it like he always has; like it belonged to him long before anyone else. “Heda is the connection we have with our past; with innate traits that linger in history because there has never been a time when they weren’t needed.” Some of the words he says are lost to you— _innate_ —but he must sense that because he explains them quietly; much like Costia had once taught you.

The clans are carrion birds, plucking at the corpse of the dead, hoping to pluck the untarnished spirit born new and unblemished into the body of a babe. An eternal spirit looking at the world through brand new eyes—sharpened into a weapon by savage creatures of war. A cycle that begins, and ends with death—over and over. No _heda_ has seen their twenty-fifth year; they are glorified sacrifices, strung up with the expectations of their people. To feed them, fight for them, protect them—and die for them.

“It isn’t their fault—not truly.” He is tired, you can see it in the long breaths he takes between sentences. “They can’t remember a time when they weren’t at war—when _heda_ wasn’t a spoil of battle.” Even in the lives you live when your eyes begin to close—you have always known war. Not always with swords and armies—but against poverty, and brutality, against tradition, and expectation. Life is war, and you cannot save your people from this. Every choice is a battle, every victory a war won—and every defeat a harrowing surrender. This man of answers is looking to you for one of his own, and for once, you know—without having to be cuffed in the ear, or laid flat on your back.

Brave, and dangerous, and hopeful—those had been the words used to describe a man so many had loved. Spoken by his second, to the girl who would become a child king. You had been brave, you had been dangerous—maybe you had always been those things. But you had been taught to find hope—from Enrick, and Costia, and a woman willing to die to reach you. It does not live inside you like it does them—because they have allowed you to borrow theirs; you hold it in your hands, you press it against your chest, and though you often forget it. Put it down and leave it behind; for days, months, or years—when you discover it in your possessions, dusty and bright, you wonder why you left it to begin with.

You smile, lopsided like a child, eyes sharp like the weapon you are, “Heda,” you cannot abolish their pain, you cannot catch every blade, you cannot quell the storm, “ _Heda_ is hope,” but you can stand with them. You can shoulder their burden for a moment to give them a reprieve, you can catch enough blades to stave off a slaughter, you can shelter them in the worst of the downpour.


	5. jus drein jus daun

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Maybe it makes us both villains,” it’s a sad thought, without heart and without soul, “maybe there are no heroes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whelp, chapter five! Thank you everyone for the kudos and comments, they mean everything to me. I love hearing what your have to say. This chapter takes place over about six months, so it deals with one particular set of events instead of winding through a few years. Enjoy!
> 
> As always, feel free to message me on tumblr at _civilorange_.

Polis has always been known for their market—a stretch of poorly crafted booths and free-stood store fronts selling everything from horizon to horizon. From things that belong on the far side of the bone canyon, to ornate shells from the deepest bowels of the great water. To these people wars are fought by idiots who believed an imaginary line on the ground meant anything—they are not _gonas_ , they have no colored sashes—though, if one wished to purchase one, there was a stall offering a sash of any color; authentic, they swear.

They were your people.

And maybe on too many levels they still are, because it is in these crowded alley ways that you are truly one of many—with your face washed clean of kohl, and your weapons hidden in the folds of brown and tan. Little children pull at your fingers to direct you toward their parent’s stalls, where they are swooped up onto their mother or father’s shoulders. A drape of fabric across your nose is all you need to keep your identity safe, because these people don’t care for commanders or generals—the kings and queens of all the worlds could step through Polis’ market on a busy day, and no one would be the wiser.

As long as they didn’t get in the way.

This is where you find your center. These people who have nothing to hide, because they are never asked—their truths are genuine, and their concerns rooted in reality. The fishers garble through concerns about the unseasonable whirls of wind and rain—you decide to speak with your _whetled_ about parties ready to retrieve capsized fishermen. The tanners chit about enormous wolves—thrice the size of even the largest _canan_ —that’ve been stalking the darkest trails of the wood; a hunting trip for the _trikru’s_ pale sashes, let them earn their winter pelts.

The most unsettling news is the continued conflict in the east—twice since you’ve had to dispatch warriors to guard small villages belonging to the  _medoukru_ —the golden plains between the woods of the trikru, and the swamps of the _whetkru._ One of the smaller clans, useful for grain and farmland—a important resource with how harsh winter has been. With this coalition you are not just responsible for trikru—but the other eleven clans as well.

“It ain’t worth it.” A hardened merchant you almost recognize from your youth offered up to those gathered; his creased face turning into a frown while picking at his nails with a dull blade. “Some _pauna_ general rebelled and got the whole place on watch.” You’d heard rumors in this vein for weeks; of a large portion of the whetkru army slipping away under an influential general. They fought the idea of the coalition, wish to remain independent in their lands—you hadn’t realized it had gotten to the point that even neutral merchant feared the territory.

You send word by way of messenger, that you wish to treat with this general; discuss terms, even if you intend to do nothing but cleave their head from their shoulders.

* * *

“Alexander.” No one will ever say your name like him; this boy-no-more who had kill marks and black ink, who hefted his war hammer with the same ease you’d pick up a pen, who smiled softer than the brush of a bird’s wing. He has grown more than a man should—wide across the shoulders, and whole heads taller than most able bodied men. He steps into the commander’s tent with the tentative ease of a giant, taking up enough space for two men, and seeming nonplussed by it. He has grown into himself, comfortable with his skin and the weight of duty.

He looks at you like he has not seen you before—a stranger who has carved open his small friend and crawled inside her skin. How can you tell this man, who used to be a boy, that you have always been _heda_. That even when you had been small and wily, you had dreamt of cities long since burned to the ground—that you lived whole lives in your dreams, and that their outlines crawl into the corners of your vision. His marks are on display for all to appreciate, yours are hidden away under fabric and leather.

Your predecessors wore their achievements blatantly—not boastful, but as a reminder. You pull secrets around your shoulders, because it makes you _other_ —a figure that belongs in a story this man would have once written. Whether you are the hero, or the villain, remains to be seen. You seem a character to him now—sequestered away in your brutalized metal armor, and most mutilated coat. You are death and war, you are savage and dangerous—but this boy had given you a name. You’d chosen it, but he had given it to you.

“The name no longer seems too large,” it had been too grand for a little sparrow, but you haven’t been that bird in so long. Star dust has settled in your bones, making your weightless and eternal. This ravaged man speaks with the tongue of a poet—rolling and smooth, his eastern accent purposely harsh because you remember how softly he truly sounds. He has spent many years bleeding for the whetkru, fighting their wars and slaughtering their enemies—he is a storyteller, and though he will never keep a record of life in words, they are scrawled across his body in scars and ink. They speak of moments that bleed into every other moment in life—that influence and change. Surely this man, once a boy, had broken much like you had—he had shattered and his broken pieces stuck into the craw of all those unfortunate enough to witness.

“I’ve picked up a new one along the way,” your English is sharp, and his scarred brow hikes upward—surprise, though you don’t believe it is warranted—and he almost smiles. “ _Heda_ ; a little shorter.” But so much heavier; the weight threatening to pull you down with every breath you choose to take. Because it is a choice—every morning you push away the past, the marvels of a dead world, and step into this reality. You forget Costia’s gentle lips that you can still imagine against the curve of your shoulder. You ignore the ache hot in the morrow of your ancient bones.

“Well then, _heda_.” This name sounds wrong from him, like the sour smell that lingers after the acid fog, like the quiet before a storm. “Why am I here?” This man, once a boy, is what stands between you and peace—a storyteller forced to be a warrior, who could no longer accept that there was no war. That gallons of spilt blood had been for senseless lines in the dirt—for words and pride.

“There is no more war.” No more, like by saying this, you could truly make it so. Could quell all conflict and stash it away in the corners of your mind that will always only half belong to you. “Your leaders have agreed to my terms.” All twelve leaders had met in Polis, dressed in their finest—rich men and women who knew how to supply capitals and organize councils—who voted and argued, who wrote laws and paid for them with gold and silver. These were the lands most dangerous snakes—but they were her snakes now.

The representative from the whetkru—a king, though some of the other clans prefer lord or lady, chief or captain—speak of unrest; how his vendors and merchants worry for their safety. Their own warriors revolt and buck the offered terms—they shy away from peace, because they have always known war. The civilians—the average people—just want calm; they want an end to the bloodshed, the end of lost children to the machine of war.

“Those soft men did,” and this is where you are—grown and on opposite sides. “I did not. And my men haven’t either.” Their leaders have called them rebels, their civilians have asked for help—you wished he was savage with bloodlust that he was foaming with hatred and lunacy. That would have made this an easy choice, even if it would be a painful one.

But he is resigned; pressed into a mold that should not have been big enough to fit his overwhelming heart and his bruised hope. He is a stallion not broken, but ruined—his spirit crushed, and his soul limping. He never had the constitution for war, but he’d been pulled screaming into the fray—and now it is all he has. Pride over imaginary lines, and glory through no compromise.

“Nothing good can come from this,” this is why you had ordered your guards out, to plead with a boy who no longer exists, to save one person in your life, to feel like you aren’t bleeding out inside because reality is determined to kill you quietly. “Death isn’t the answer. Reconsider.” You are weak—love is weakness. Because you love him, in a way you hadn’t been able to love even your own father—because for so many years he had _chosen_ you. He had sat beside you when you were little sparrow, when you were small and scrappy. He hadn’t gone anywhere, he hadn’t left you—you had.

You lost everything—because you’d been _found_. You stopped slipping across the plains into whetkru territory where you’d laze away the afternoon with a smiling bull of a poet second. He’d teach you how to read, and you’d teach him the proper way to toss a dagger—he’d write you stories from his dreams, and you’d tell him tales from the world. But you left him, you allowed the world to ruin him, and with all your power, all this supposed might you had—you hadn’t even thought to save him.

“How many have you killed for peace, _Leksa_?” Too many—and the dip of your frown must tell him this, the clench of your fist around the hilt of your blade. “I’m just willing to kill a few more.” You should strike him down—it won’t prevent a war, but it is a debilitating blow. Cutting their leadership at the knees before you even begin your campaign. Clenching your jaw, you turn away from him—spine straight, shoulders square—an insult, and a stupid move, but you refuse to let him see the moisture in your eyes.

“Very well.” Hoarse, exhaling—inhaling—exhaling—inhaling.

* * *

You are no stranger to war—to the lifeless bodies, and the careless blood. To death marches and battle cries. But this is different—this is hell. The whetkru nestle their settlements on high stilts in humid swamps—their dark wood houses closer to the tree branches, than the murky water. Their land is moist and alive—vines twisting around trunks and dipping into the dark bogs. Enormous creatures twice a human’s length lurk in those black placid waters, and your warriors aren’t used to their quick strikes—the water people have always been peaceful, or as peaceful as a clan can be. They mind themselves, and hardly trade with others—their paths and settlements too much of a mystery to warriors who are used to thick forests and frozen mountains when they battle.

There is no water reflective enough when to reapply your war paint—the kohl more tacky than usually, more mud than ash. There is nothing glorious about being the commander here—no crimson sash, no bulky armor. The tight tangle of vegetation makes those things impossible—stripped down to a single layer of filthy clothing, blood and mud caked onto fabric and skin alike. Your sword is still sheathed at your waist and rarely leaves there—the thick trunked trees are too close together to be able to wield the weapon properly. A dagger has been your salvation, that and the blow gun nestled on your opposite hip—these tactics new to you, but you’ve made them your own over the last few moons.

You have the advantage of numbers, but that means so little when you are foreigners to the land—a dozen warriors had died in a single night because of a flat two headed snake that resides in bog that carry a particular purple flowered plant. You’ve ordered those places to be avoided, and none have died since. The seasonal downpour have made setting up camps impossible, leaving men to cluster together under slight leaf cover through the freezing nights—on particularly horrible nights, you stand guard in the rain. Not because you are stronger than your men, or because you do not feel the ice water slapping against your skin—but because they need something to believe in and that is you.

You are heda—and heda is hope.

The snakes back in Polis send messengers with pleas for you to return to the capitol—especially when news of a battlefront sickness reaches them. A disease that has men coughing up blood and their skin to begin to rot away—many have succumbed to similar illnesses, the environment perfect for disease to fester and consume. But you refuse every time, even when your own cough produces blood, even when your eyes swell shut and your skin loses all color. You are not dying, but you are fighting off infection after infection—still leading men into battles you always seem to win, even while losing.

He is smart, and he knows your numbers are too impressive to hit head on—so he burns your supply caravans, he burns toxic plants to poison the air with red tinted smoke, he slips drugs into the water and too many warriors lose their mind. The first few moons are harsh, his tactics overwhelming, and it doesn’t seem to matter how many skirmishes your warriors win, because it is every other moment that you feel an overwhelming defeat linger.

These whetkru rebels hide in the bogs, tangle themselves in the weeds—they are one with their land, and you wish they could see how much they were hurting it. How this war was pointless—and that they were just shoving off the inevitable. They deprived their own villages from supplies—civilians who were off-limits to both forces, an unusual gentleman’s agreement that is never spoken of verbally—and they leave them without protection from bandits with far less scruples.

You’ve spent so long in the swamp you forget when it feels like to be dry—the constant rain always drowning out an otherwise hospital afternoon. The bugs chew at any exposed skin, leaving you to cake mud across the tan of your face and arms. In all the ways Anya seemed at home on horseback and in the forest—she seems at home here too, covered in mud, crouched in the strong jungle trees.

This had intended to be a quick campaign, a slaughter of a much smaller force, but it takes months—you lose more men than you had even conceived, and it isn’t until they simply run out of forces that you find their stronghold. A rickety village deep in the bogs, surrounded by man eating lizards and bug the size of your palm—you and Anya bring your most trusted warriors to bring this war to a close—this is a victory, the blood pumping through your veins declares it as such. But why does your heart stutter, why does it feel like a loss?

* * *

Costia’s death had shattered you, a million pieces scattered across the ground, leaving you with the arduous task of picking each one up one at a time—you’d missed some, and purposely left others—but this ruin had been possible because for the few moons she’d been in your life, you’d felt whole. She’d held you in her arms, and the burden of staying in one piece had been taken off your shoulders and put in her soft, warm hands. She knew some were sharp, and for every prick of blood on her fingertips from one of your more dangerous edges, she’d kiss you softly—she’d tell you how _good_ you were, and how _strong_ you were. She dulled your fragments until she could hold you safely—until you were more a person than the mosaic of a monster.

This is different; you are not shattering, you are not searching for pieces. Because you are not whole—you never had been except that sojourn in the safe haven of Costia’s warmth. You are fragmented as you always have been—and that makes this worse. This man had loved you without question, he had bolstered you through so many fumbles, had coaxed you through childhood with the steel spine of a broken boy himself—you loved him not because he made you whole, but because he had chosen you as you were. You’d been enough. He showed you what it was to accept your duty, to be less the person you want to be, and more the one you need to be—a warrior with a storyteller’s heart. A savage with a poet’s eyes.

“Any words?” He is on his knees between the slight frame of two of your most trusted warriors— _jusbrota_ , blood kin. Men who had cut their tongues out so that they may never spill your secrets—a sacrifice they make willingly for their commander. You’d been forced to watch—the ritual happens when the commander’s spirit is found, so usually an unsuspecting newborn in placed before a line of men willing to mutilate themselves. Each new commander has a group of jusbrotas, unique to them—not their predecessor, not their successor. Men who will slit their own throats when the commander dies, and the spirit moves on. You’d been young, standing in a cluster of gold sashes and politicians, and watched as a handful of men cut their own tongues out—blood pouring from the gaps in their smiles where teeth had been pulled out in anticipation of being replaced by wild cat canines. You’d been horrified when you had been told you must swipe a line of your own blood across their foreheads, proclaim them kin in both blood and service.

These two men hold a boy you love on his knees, because despite his size, and the worn nature of the life painted on his skin in scars and ink—he still has a boy’s eyes. Sad, quiet eyes that are always asking if everything is done—if he can move on. He suffered silently because he never learned how to say the words needed to be saved—to find safety. He comforted himself with the swing of his hammer, and the rumble of war; he plastered wet paper over gaping wounds, and pretended that they didn’t exist. And for that, you are sentencing him to death—you pass judgement on him for doing the very things you are guilty of.

Because that is the right of the victor.

This man, who was once _your_ boy, wrote stories—he spun them beautifully on rare afternoon that he wasn’t being run into the ground by his mentor. His quiet teller’s voice, hardly a touch of the east in it, would tell of heroes from distant lands who would steal into rotted out kingdoms at night—men and women who would fight for those who could not fight for themselves. It had seemed glorious to them—two children who had fought battles their whole lives, but never for more than themselves. Or each other. To overthrow monarchs and tyrants because it was the right thing to do—but you’d always wondered, but never asked. Were these stories glorious because there was only one side? One hero—one cause.

He looks at you with tired eyes—a startling contrast to the mask of war he wears. Kohl dragged over one eye, blood splashed liberally over every inch of his frame, mud caked into the bed of his nails and the creases of his palms. He’s almost smiling, that slight upturn at the corner of his mouth he got when stoicism was supposed to be imposed. What made this so hard was how well you knew him—how he had always been a phantom limb. You didn’t always feel him, but when you did it was visceral and debilitating—real in ways it should have been. He says nothing, but you can’t accept this silently—even if he can. Because you’d always been the brash one—the reckless one—the impulsive one.

“Can we be the villains of our own story?” You can feel your jusbrota’s eyes on you, but you know your secrets can live safely in their chests—they will store your truths away without question, because they are yours in ways not even this once-boy is. You look at him though, at the lift of his dark brows, and the lopping tilt of his addled head—you’d always felt like the villain. Even when you’d been celebrated and worshipped, you felt like the tyrant, and not the hero in the night. The oppressive force that holds all around you down, simply because you could. This moment felt all the more like a defeat—like you had finally succumbed to the truth.

“Does that make me the hero?” He asks wryly, unable to shrug for where you had dislocated his shoulder. You have to smile, because underneath all the grim and blood—you still hold pieces of the children you were. Children who always felt like they were pretending to be young—because you’d felt too big for your young bones, to claustrophobic in your unscarred skin.

“Maybe it makes us both villains,” it’s a sad thought, without heart and without soul, “maybe there are no heroes.”

He looks at you with so much care, so much _love_ , that it turns your stomach—because you don’t think even Costia would have been able to love you now. She’d believed in goodness, even false goodness, because her world could compromise—her world could exist without war, and without struggle. Her world could talk instead of fight—but that world isn’t this one. And you don’t think it ever will be. He knows the world, he has been fighting it every day for the right to live since birth—like you. His fight is over, his spine can bend and his hands can unclench—he is safe from war, because he has lost. He has run out of pages, his pen has gone dry of ink—this was it. And he was alright with that.

“You asked me for a story once,” so many years ago, when the world had seemed smaller despite how much of it you had seen—when an abused boy had wanted to buy paper with a fistful of useless copper. He’d never paid you for that, never told you the story you asked for—he’d told you so many others, but that one had always remained absent, and you’d never felt cheated for it.

“There was a sparrow, a bird smaller than all the rest—the world she lived in so large, that sometimes she forgot how small she really was. She would challenge diving falcons to races, and the hardiest vultures to scavenger hunts—she didn’t always win, but when she did she learned from her mistakes. She became wily, she made the world realize it had no advantage for being so large.” You wonder how long he's been writing this story, how often he told himself it in his head. He looked at you, _really_ looked at you, and you feel like someone was seeing you for the first time in so long—could see behind all the masks you’d forgotten about yourself. Commander, and wolf, and warrior, and legend—you weren’t even Lexa, because this boy had known you before you’d had a name.

“She learned that she couldn’t conquer the world with just brutality, but by making a balance so delicate only her small talons could adjust it without crumbling everything to the ground. This large world of hers was enamored by such fine work; work that had been impossible until then. It was majesty. When she was young, the sparrow had a friend—not a bird like so many others in her life, but a tortoise. This tortoise had loved the sparrow so much, he’d thought if he tried hard enough he could fly—the sparrow always told him the ground was just as beautiful, that he didn’t need the white of clouds, or the rush of air. But this tortoise had always believed the vultures in his village—that the ground was for the dead, and he was wrong for wanting the sturdy dirt beneath him.”

Your lips are pinched together, making the split in them begin to bleed anew, your eyes are hot and the muscle in your cheek twitches—you want him to stop, you don’t want this story to end. Because you know it is his last.

“The sparrow would fly away often, not because she wanted to leave the tortoise, but because the sky called to her urgently—the winds and the sunset needed her. Needed her to carefully stack the mountains, to balance the trees and settle the snow—delicate careful work that no blundering hawk could manage. And the tortoise had no one—he didn’t blame the sparrow, but the trees she set and the mountains she piled cast shadows across the ground that had never been there before. So many loved the shade, needed reprieve from the hot sun and the horrible rain—but the tortoise just saw darkness—a dark he’d been able to ignore before because the sparrow had been so bright.”

He doesn’t blame you, even if you are the negligent monster of this story—a careless sparrow fixing a world with carefully placed shadows. For the greater good, for so many you’d been able to overlook the turmoil of the few—it had been pragmatic, something you’d chosen to be since Costia.

“The vultures hated the sparrow—hated the shadow and the safety she gave to so many, because it meant less to scavenge for them. So they tore down the trees, they threatened to topple the beautiful mountains—and the tortoise hadn’t seen the sparrow in so long, he had forgotten who had made this new world. He hated the trees, and he hated the mountains—and if these vultures wanted them gone, he would stand with them. They no longer seemed to care that he could not fly, because he could push trees over so much easier than they. He no longer wanted the sky, because he had so much to do on the ground. Things only he could.”

He’s crying. And for as long as you have known him, you realize you have never seen him cry—his lip had quivered, and his eyes filled, but he’d never let them fall. You think it had been something he had learned young, to not show the sadness, to never give proof of the weakness. You’ve cried in front of him before, when you’d broken a wrist, or he’d told a particularly sad story—you’d felt safe enough with him to allow yourself that. But as much as he had loved you, he’d kept that part of himself tucked away.

His tears beckoned you forward, and you don’t realize you’d falling to your knees in front of him, until his ruined face is clasped between your monster paws. This ravaged man that you had helped create—not by choice, and not alone—but because you had not considered the ramifications of all your actions. Your thumbs swipe at the tear streaks on his cheeks, catching more blood than salt water. Your jusbrotas tense, not liking you being this close to a dangerous presence, but they will not speak against you—they cannot. You murmur _nou_ to him quietly, English lost as your brain catches up with your body, but he’s continuing, his eyes bright, and his weight leaning toward you.

“By the time the sparrow came to save her forests, the tortoise had done so much damage—he and the vultures had made the land fertile with blood, had ruined so much of a world more beautiful than the one they were from. The tortoise could not stop, because if he did—what he had done would kill him worse than any talon or beak. It would mean he’d become a monster simply because the sparrow had not been there to tell him otherwise.” You know this pain, soldiering through wounds self-inflicted because doing otherwise would mean death—it would mean killing what little fragments of soul you had left. Fooling yourself is sometimes easier than fooling other—because you want to believe the lie, you want the comfort of half-truths.

“I’m tired,” so much of him is leaning on you, his frame dwarfs yours, and it is frightening how much stronger than him you are right now. His wrecked torso pressing down on your shoulders, but you hold him like you had children when they were thrust into your arms—your gauntleted fingers combing through the messy strands of his dark hair. Your nose pressed to his temple while he sobs into the shoulder not protected by a copper pauldron. “So tired.”

“I know.” You do—because your tired too, you feel the same weight in your bones as him, but your story has no end—your death will be some fantastic middle, and a new you—a different you—will emerge from the pages. Someone with your soul, but new eyes. He doesn't seem to be able to finish his story, so you fill in the ending; this much you know. “The sparrow never stopped loving the tortoise—even when he razed her forest, and killed her hawks. She loved him so very much.” You could be mistaken for siblings like this—his one good arm wrapped wholly around you, while he broke. The protective clasp of your hands on his neck and at his shoulder. A shattered family that had never stood a chance. Your words were quiet, like even these truths couldn’t be known to the jusbrotas a step away.

“What do I do?” You are lost—in a way you haven’t been since you’d been _found_ —Costia’s death had boiled your blood for revenge, it had propelled you forward to take and conquer, but this was just sadness. It carved you out and left no heat in your blood. You admit uncertainty for the first time since the title of commander has been thrust upon your shoulders—you are a girl, a sparrow, and this large world suddenly seems so much larger. Towering figures that dwarf you and promise to crush you for any misstep. He pulls away, his eyes red and his features drawn tight, but he smiles for you—he still doesn’t blame you.

“Toward the sun,” he says it simply, without guile. That was how your namesake had conquered the world, after all—you’d said that to him so often. When he needed to win, or just not lose so badly.

* * *

You give him to the people of the water—you and your jusbrotas march him into their capitol, and relinquish him to their leaders—he is a rebel of their nation, after all. He is bound and limping—he is a legend to them, the monster from the swamps, the giant of their nightmares. And you are their legend killer—you are death. You wish to grant him mercy, to save him or at least to end him quickly and take this justice from these people who should mean nothing to you—but you can’t. You are not a girl any longer, you are a leader—and you must live by example.

“ _Jus drein jus daun_.” They will torture him for days, they will carve him open, and stitch him back together—they will cut out his tongue, and burn holes through him. He will scream, and he will beg—but you will be deaf to them because you must be an example. At the end, when there is nothing left that can be done to him—you will push a sword through his heart. You will kill the last person who knew a nameless girl—this man, who was once a gentle boy, would join Costia. Would haunt the corners of your vision where the outlines of dead worlds are thickest—he would be yet another ghost in your soul, added to the thousands more you carry.

“The dead are gone, _Leksa_.” He looks at you when the tip of your blade barely presses to the burned skin of his chest—really looks at you, and the love in his eyes had always been a comfort before. But it hurts you now—no one should love the person killing them, he should not look _grateful_ , because you had allowed this to happen. But he has given himself for dead—he is already your haunt, but he wants to comfort you. His voice is soft, hardly a trace of the east in his tone, and his skinned lips tip into a bloody smile. “The living are hungry.”

And you thrust your sword through his heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, while my version of Lexa’s life is very different from the beginning, this chapter in particular I feel really gives this story a different tone. In most cases Costia was the reason Lexa learned sacrifice, learned how to give up her own happiness so that her people will prosper—and while that always makes me so sad, and I love it so much, I wanted to show something different. To Lexa Costia was a flash in the pan—they had only been together for months, but she had burned so brightly for Lexa, that the short amount of time hadn’t mattered. She’d been able to illuminate such much that those short months had felt like lifetimes.
> 
> Here is a slower love, between two battered children who could never exactly be who they wanted to be—because of fate, because of circumstance, because of duty. And they had left impressions on each other so deep that even if they don’t see each other for months—or in this last case, years—they are still felt. This death is so much worse _because_ she has no one to rage against, because she doesn’t slaughter a dynasty—this feels like a loss, because she wants to protect him so much, but she knows she can’t. Jus drein jus daun.
> 
> Anyway, take care; have a safe weekend!


	6. hadn't a name for the weight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You make them think you a god, that you don’t hurt or worry.” Her words are getting closer, the weighed steps of her winter boots brutal against the stone of the ground. You don’t shrug her off when her gloved hands fall like death sentences on your shoulders. “But I can see you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter six! I deleted the first few starts to this chapter, and cut out who sections because I couldn't decide where exactly I wished to go and I'm still not sure how I feel about it; but this chapter is Lexa's spiral. Slipping lower and lower, and turning away all those who can help her. How can she ever be the commander truly when she knows she has a safety net? We're getting close to the 100 falling; maybe another chapter or two, and then everything gets a whole new kind of crazy.
> 
> As always feel free to follow, or message me, on tumblr @ civilorange

The ghosts that come back from this war are not dead—they linger like shadows in the dark, always there but never seen. Their eyes haunted by things that hadn’t been thought before—the brittle line between here and not, between life and death, between horror and glory. War had always been approached as a celebrated thing—death marches and battle cries. But the lingering silence is a festering wound when warriors slip back into the green between the trees. This war had no life to it—it was sick and rotting, it smelled of old blood and fetid meat. There was a permeated death dug into the skin of those who hadn’t actually perished—from the moist humid air, or the cold sharp rain.

You feel it. It is the ache behind your eyes, and the throb in your bones—you feel your ghosts more heavily now, with the added weight of Enrik—his muddy eyes loving until the last moment, his lips skinned and bleeding as he smiled for you. The dead are gone, his words are mocking now as he lingers long past his last breath—silently strolling beside you, arm linked with Costia—your other forever haunt. The living are hungry, the hunger shows are desperation on most, too much white around their irises—too much white in the black of their running war paint. Even men and women from a hundred battles can’t shake the moisture from their bones—the stagnation form their veins. They hold so much of the swamp inside them it is suffocating in the dry heat of the forest.

You must appear as if the marsh hasn’t touched you—as if the bogs hadn’t stolen parts you hadn’t been willing to part with. Each nimble brush with death a new horror to add to the graveyard that has become your soul—collecting markers for named and nameless corpses alike. Heda is pardoned from taking kill marks—the tradition forgiven because no commander would go to their grave with an inch of unscarred skin. You are no exception—though you battle with your words more than most—you’ve garnered much the reputation for being ruthless. This is what forgives you your progressive ways—your highbrow English. You speak prettily, which means your sword must be swift and merciless. You cannot let them think you a bone man in the tombs of paper and history—you must best them in savagery, but mind them in thought.

“You think so loudly.” Daxon sooths beside you, his hands resting carefully on the sling holding his satchel of medicinal herbs in place—Indra’s son has always been a thoughtful boy, born the same summer as you, though entire clans apart. Soft in all the ways that seemed to go beyond notice, slipping through the harder edges of life so that he was not shorn and tattered. The general does not go easy on him for being her son—if anything she runs him into the ground harder, hoping to shatter him herself so that the world would not have a chance to do it carelessly.

His skin is dark and marked, holding many of the same inked lines as his mother—a silent salute to the dead man that had been both a husband, and a father. Many warriors hold similar meaning marks—though they never present in the same way. You have nothing etched into your skin for either your mother or father—they had never been permanent enough to warrant a mark. Costia rides around your bicep—the arm you wield your sword with, to remind you caution. To remind you of thought, and progression, and ah won kru. You had said it once—she had waged peace, while you waged war—but the few moments you had spent in her arms, allowed you to imagine what peace might’ve been like.

“They are as quiet as any,” you volley back listlessly, trying not to allow him this victory—Daxon has the tendency to get insufferable quickly; a trait he had not picked up from Indra. “Hence why they are thoughts.” He is not a general, he is not a chief, but he is wise in the same way Costia had been—that he viewed his hands as more than weapons. Daxon healed; he stayed suffering, and did his best to help—to sooth those who hurt. You’d had your share of gashes tended to by the cheeky boy—often with his mother scowling at you both as you bickered—you don’t know how Indra straddles the line of absolute deference and near constant exasperation. “Your words on the other hand…”

“This war unsettled you, _heda.”_ Your eyes turn to him brimming with the quiet things you are capable of—the horrible truths stitched into the edges of your many pieces. The mosaic of a monster. “It was different—and though you’ve always felt that, they are beginning to as well.” Clenching your jaw tightly, you turn to look away from him—to the harrowing warriors trying to mend themselves with bruises and bravado. Fight until they forgot everything that had touched them—until they forgot the scent of putrid bodies. The dead piling up, higher every day.

“We fight. That is what we know—we don’t live, we fight.” _Yu gonplei ste odon_ ; your fight is over. So much of you could not understand that, because in many ways—you could not die. There would be pieces of you in every commander until the sun swallowed the earth. You were forever—and yet, everything said you would die before your twenty-fifth summer. You would perish in battle, or to sickness—you would burn in a pyre identical to any other. And then you would be born again; pieces of you would blink open new untouched eyes, and everything would start again. Would your predecessor feel too large for their skin as well? Would they be weighed down with ghosts that don’t belong to them—would Costia and Enrik sit on their shoulders like haunts?

“It is how we survive.” He supplies with nary a concern, his unarmored shoulders lifting and falling with a grace that belonged to deer and horses—the nimble lop of prey. “Why not fight, when the alternative is dying?” You know he sees the shadows in your eyes, the ghosts the refuse to leave, the horrors that cannot be forgot—they build and settle and nest. There until your last breath because you will never find peace—even if you do find it for your people, because you shoulder their burdens. You put them upon your back so that they do not have to tread on the weapons littering the ground that will get them there.

“I’ve died,” you hold all those deaths in your chest—pieces of men and women long dead, who have become fragments of your own soul. “A thousand or more times—it’s much like drowning. Panic, and fear—and then quiet. Filling your ears, and your lungs—until you don’t feel anything.” The punch of a bullet through the cage of your ribs, the burn from acid falling from the sky, a spear through the stomach in a grand arena, the beep of a heart monitor in a dark hospital room. Daxon is looking at you with something lingering in his eyes, something soft that doesn’t belong in this world of survival. One of his hands has left the sling of his satchel to almost set it on your shoulder—before it simply falls between you.

“Knowing doesn’t make it easier,” it isn’t pity in his eyes—something closer to concern, to fear itself—you wonder what haunts his dreams. What ghosts he carries with him? “It’s hard, isn’t it? Harder than you make it seem.” This man has grown with you, he’d stumbled and fallen and found himself alongside you—even if you had been set to different paths. You went to battle, and he stitched you together when you _returned—symbiosis,_ that had been a favorite word of Costia’s. Surviving together. You can’t admit to him the burn in your stomach, or the ache in your chest—the slivers of your soul you’d given up time and again. You must be strong, and impervious, and all manner of untouched. But these new blows have unseated you, have tossed you to the ground, and the wounds that need tending aren’t gashes and broken bones. They are bloodless and festering, they are without cure or cause—lingering.

“Costia read me a story once,” his dark eyes widen, his veneer of calm shattered by surprise—you don’t speak of her, her name doesn’t fall off your tongue by choice, but Daxon had loved her too. They were like-creatures, soft spoken and tender in all the places you’ve grown hard and uncompromising. Her death had broken something in him he doesn’t speak of; a hope or dream that had seemed possible when she’d been alive. “Of a warrior named Atlas born of two clans, who fought for his father’s people—when his war was lost, his punishment was to hold the sky on his shoulders, so that it would never fall and crush the ground.”

You’d been enamored with the tale ever since Costia had slipped into your bedroom clutching the large ruined book to her chest—she’d stolen it from the cellars of the bone men’s library. You know she could have just asked to borrow it—but she’d stolen it to add the thrill you thought necessary when learning was involved. It had taken your mind off how horrible your English was, and how difficult writing and reading had turned out to be. So at night, she would read to you—by a single stray candle, you head cushioned in her lap. So many nights you fell asleep to her quiet voice telling you about the past—of warriors and lovers long dead.

“I was born with the sky on my shoulders, even if I hadn’t a name for the weight in the beginning.” Some part of you had always known, had always felt like you were pretending to be something you weren’t. “It isn’t my punishment, it is my choice—so that my people may never fear the sky crashing down on them.” You are no Atlas, but at one time it had felt like a punishment to be _heda._ That the person you had forged yourself into had to die, so that you could be this ideal so many imagined you to be—the great uniter, the ruthless commander, the wise protector. So many things you hadn’t been—but had learned to be. Or maybe you were still just pretending?

“It is hard, but I bear it willingly.”

* * *

The seasons were changing with a readiness that was startling—autumn tumbling heartlessly into winter far too soon. No village adequately prepared, the supply caravans caught in mountain passes and endless snow piled plains. The sprawling landscape of Polis stumbling to a halt—families bunking down in their homes waiting for a reprieve from the cold. The runners and scribes from your stronghold are told to distribute everything—furs and food, candles and wood. The halls have never seemed darker, cold and bitter, and you can’t wait any longer for the break in the storm—for even a moment’s reprieve.

The war room has never been so empty—the maps littered with markers tipped on their side. Enemies and allies who have dug in for the foreseeable future. It is in these moments that you falter—the servants who refuse to leave murmur amongst themselves of the snow storm almost twenty winters ago that had wiped the thirteenth tribe from the ground. Those that lived on the highest peaks of the mountains—skipping like goats from rock to rock, until a wave of snow had fallen and buried them all. Even so many seasons later remnants of their village are found scattered at the foothills of the mountain range—ruins of the lost. So much more recent than the world before.

You had not experienced that storm—you hadn’t lived that much life yet, and while your blood is northern, and winter had never slowed you, even your fingers begin to cramp and freeze, going numb from where you have bare tips wrapped around the hilt of your blade—like you could overcome this with violence. When word reaches you how hard TonDC has fared—their chieftain dead, their warriors sick with wet lungs—you call your closest to you. Anya, and Indra, and Gustus—they are pale shadows of their former selves, but they would brave whatever you ask of them. You have never felt comfortable with this level of loyalty—with the knowledge that so many would die if you simply asked it of them. That their trust had been placed in you long before your own had.

“ _Tondisi_ ails.” You feel the ripple of tension in the room, your eyes flicking through the dark to match with Daxon where he stands in the door—his own eyes on his mother, a native of _Tondisi_ who still knew many there. You ache for them in a way you have never been able to hurt for yourself—they care, so much, and the world simply crumbles around them for that care. “They have sent word that they are in need of aid; and I plan to give it.” Indra’s jaw is clenched, and her nod is tight and controlled—she will never ask to leave you, she will never swear off her duty for the sake of love, or care, or concern. These people belong to you, and it is your responsibility to take care of them.

“Anya, you will go as my voice.” You are already looking at her when you say this—when her eyes match yours and the accusations fill the gray of her irises. Narrowed and aggressive, you don’t look away as you continue. “Indra, I trust you with their safety. You will guide them in their time.” You don’t elaborate, or wait for questions, because you are _heda—_ and your word is law. Indra bangs a fist against her chest, her tone reverent as she turns on her heel and slips from the room, her son following in her shadow. Gustus lingers because he is your protector—and there is only one person in all the twelve tribes that would consider losing their temper with you—and she is currently gritting her teeth quietly, waiting for the hulking man to leave.

“Leave us, _Gostos_.” You sooth him, giving him your attention for only a moment to offer him a faint nod—with sound mind and able body you are to square off against Anya’s wrath; a questionable choice even for the commander. When he is gone, Anya has closed the gap to thrust a palm at your shoulder, missing entirely as you spin to the side and take a few steps away. She is slower than usual, too many layers weighing down her thin deadly frame—you are in far less, your northern blood allowing you to acclimate to the weather more efficiently. It is only in these moments the citizens of _Polis_ are reminded that you hadn’t always been within the borders—that you were a nomad, that you weren’t a native _trikru._

“You don’t get to ship me off, _heda_.” The fact that she uses your title shows just how angry she is, how serious she intends to make this—you have always been _Lexa_ when alone. She has always been there to allow you a moment’s breath from being everything to everyone—something you had thought lost after Costia. Anya had always given you that—she cuffed your ears occasionally when no one was there to see, she gave you direction when you felt most aimless—steady, and present, and strong.

“I can do as I wish,” you pull arrogance around your shoulders now like a cloak, like you don’t feel the weight of her eyes on your back, the burn of her anger in your blood. She has been your faithful shadow since you had stepped into this world of hers—lingering in the dark corners of your vision, standing amongst your ghosts like she has already given herself over to your graveyard. Become yet another named body resting under the cold northern ground of your soul. She is alive in all the ways you are unable to be—because this life, these wars, had raised her from the gutter, given her purpose and power and let her release her tight grip on fear.

“You have them all fooled.” Her words throw you into the past—into a dark room where she had cornered you and made you choose who you were—the trembling child, or the stalwart commander. The spirit of the warrior and the earth—you hadn’t decided when all those men tumbled through the cracked ice and into the frozen depths of the river, or before that when you’d sliced your palm open and chose your _jusbrotas._

It had been in that sleeping room, cornered and unsure—she had made you choose. She had forced your hand because you wouldn’t have done so otherwise—you would have schemed and slipped away, would have dissolved into the forest and left all this behind. You know now that Gustus had been expecting you—that Anya had herded you like prey into the arms of the man who could corral you on the battlefront. You don’t harbor ill will toward either of them—but you do wonder what would have happened if you had gone south, instead of north.

“You make them think you a god, that you don’t hurt or worry.” Her words are getting closer, the weighted steps of her winter boots brutal against the stone of the ground. You don’t shrug her off when her gloved hands fall like death sentences on your shoulders. “But I can see you.” She always has—or at least, when she stopped searching for hints of a dead man in you. She sees the impression war have made into the corners of your eyes—the sleepless twitch to your fingers—the tense line of your shoulders. You are not shattering—you are surrendering—and she has hidden these faults from everyone; even Indra and Gustus. She keeps your white flag and broken pieces in her steady hands, and holds them until you’re ready to pick up the fight again.

Which is why she must go.

For all the reasons she had hated you that first while—she loves you now, wholly and completely. She strives to be everything to you—mother, sibling, advisor, soldier—because she has seen you die before. She’d held you in her small arms as you passed—the commander who still rested in your spirit had loved Anya, had wanted the best for her—felt guilty for having died before that desire became a reality. Anya had loved you before you’d even been born, and unlike you, she wears that love like armor—draws it around herself and wards off the worst the world has to offer.

She’ll never call it love, not really—but you see her in all the ways she sees you. You must send her away because she forgives you of your weaknesses, even if she doesn’t realize it. She softens the hardships quietly, without having to be asked, and you can’t abide by that any longer. The ground is testing you—it is blanketing your tribes in fields of snow, it threatens to eliminate your people, like it had too recently in the past. You will square up against this test, you will challenge the seasons themselves to your right to exist.

“I am no god,” it is a ridiculous notion—a god—but you are otherworldly, and Anya had never been adept as seeing that part of you, the part that saw into the past, that would live forever into the future. “But I am _heda_.” And that means ignoring the pain, and doubt, and fear—it means looking forward, despite being forced to see phantoms of the past.

“I am to find the lost merchants,” her fingers tighten around your shoulders, digging into the slight dip above your collarbones. Those mountains had been where her commander died—the man who had made her his second—and you know she fears losing you there too. “And I will escort them to Polis, and then _Tondisi_.”

She doesn’t know how to let you go, not by her own choice, not without blood and death and battle—she accepted your loss in those moments. That she might turn and you will be dashed across the rocks another casualty she had to bear upon her shoulders—but you are asking her to lose you, to release her hold and trust that she has prepared you enough to truly bear the weight of your people. To carry them on your back to your grave, and then long beyond that—into a future you will create with bloody hands and broken bones. A future you will create meticulously, and that you will never see—no commander has lived past twenty-five.

“You will see me again, _Onya_.”

* * *

When you were a child you were told stories of these mountains in winter—of how they woke from their slumber and devoured everything living upon their peaks. No one questioned the bones found in the lower slopes that had come tumbling down when the snow melted in the spring—furs wrapped around emaciated rib cages, and bodies that hadn’t quiet decomposed. Your father had been a man of no respect—but even he had given these trails wide berth when the first chill fell into the air. He would go south to the islands, throw his cargo into vast ships and float through the slate gray waters to the floating nations—the tribes that had never seen a tree or feared the snow.

The mountains are white capped jaws, and you move toward them by choice now—you are no longer a merchant, weighing everything against profit and value, you are a leader—you must make the illogical choices, because somehow they are right. You bring your _gonakru_ of _jusbrotas,_ layered with pelts of winter wolf and range hopper—thick fabric slung across their carnivorous mouths to stop the bitter cold from chilling their lungs. The snow is to your knees at its most shallow pits, but as you trudge further up the incline, it hits closer to the hilt of your sword at your waist—movement is impossible, and it is all too clear why the merchants hadn’t been able to continue after their misfortune in the storm. Each of your _geda_ holds a torch to the cold, melting a vague unhelpful path through the storm—trouncing enough with horse hooves and wagon wheels to have some semblance of direction.

The storm had killed the caravan’s horses, and shattered their carts—a merchant’s soul isn’t held together by bravery or duty. It is coin and wealth that keeps them in the thick of a blizzard—the possessions they had been intent to sell at enormous value due to the anything but intrinsic weather. Set atop _Trikova_ you squint against the harsh winds and the snow lifted from the ground and sky both—you know you should be close. The peaks spear up into the gray clouds on either of your sides, and the path narrows to a death sentence only a small distance ahead.

It isn’t until hooves crunch through wood debris that you see the shapes outlined in the show—pressing up into the white powder, you can see the broken bodies that hadn’t made it. Throwing your leg over _Trikova_ ’s side, you fall to your feet gracelessly—pushing through the waist deep drift toward the largest shape. Your hands are frigid, and the storm unrelenting, but pushing it harshly aside-you find a carts full of furs and two frozen bodies. The merchants in the best silks, too colorful to be trikru, and you wonder what had possessed them to try this act. To tempt fate so carelessly.

Your _jusbrotas_ begin piling the supplies in with no order, but all manner of haste—you go from pile to pile discovering each corpse left. There is too much snow to burn them, and not enough room to bring them with—you must leave them here, until spring at least. They are huddled together, frozen fingers grasping each other with desperation you can still see splashed across their static features. Just as you are about to turn on your heel and return, there is the slightest shift of fabric—two small tired eyes looking at you through the glaze of uncertainty—a child, a boy who could be no more than four or five winters, his face slack and numb but his body cradled between two adults that share much of his attributes.

 _“Yongon,”_ your own voice is quiet, hardly heard over the howl of wind and the heavy slap of snow—but he has lived with those sounds for days now, and your voice is strange. You wonder how long he’s been alone, how long until the instinct to survive had kicked in and he’d burrowed into the bodies that had once been his parents. He watches you carefully as you slip into the small space, your slight frame making it possible as you reach toward him—when he flinches back, you retract your hand. “We must go.” Your _azgedasleng_ left a little to be desired, you haven’t truly spoken it since you were a child, but you know he doesn’t speak _trikru,_ nor English. It is only when a particularly loud gale of wind rumbles through that he scampers toward you, tucking into the furs covering your chest.

He is small, even for his age, and it is far too easy to tuck him into your body—his narrow limbs wrapping around you as you secure him with fabric and pelts. His cold face is pressed into your pulse, and he saps all the warmth from your skin. You release these two dead merchants from their fight, and take their son from their tomb. He’s shivering violently in the open air, but your _jusbrotas_ have finished and _Trikova_ pranced impatiently, ice beginning to crust into his velvet muzzle. Scratching your cold fingers through his bristle, you swing up into the saddle too awkwardly—the small body pressed into your making your gait unwieldy. One of the silent warriors to your side offer to take the boy with his dark eyes alone, but you shake your head.

“My name is Lexa.” You murmur to the bundle in your lap, both of your hands struggling to turn your monster about, his hooves crashing through the snow banks as your _gonakru_ do the same in your wake.

“Sam.” His voice small and muffled, his breath surprising hot against your neck; your eyes are stationed on the forest edge—seemingly an infinite distance away.

“I greet you, Sam.” Even you know your words are clunky and awkward, but you are unfamiliar with the northern tongue—not as much as you had been once. When you lived there, or when you were at war with them.

“You talk strangely.” He huffs a giggle, curling tighter into your arms as your beast of a mount tronces through another bank of snow—the set of carts behind you dangerously close to tipping. “ _Heda_.” His trikru is significantly better than your _azgeda_ —and seems to know you on sight. You wonder if you are their horror stories, like the mounon is to the children of the wood. Ghost, and mountain men, and commanders.

“I seem to be a much worse student than some,” you continue nudging the boy; he grows quiet after that, but you know he’s sluggish from the cold. The jolt that had aided him from your presence seems to be fading. You talk to him lowly, murmuring into his ear to keep him away—keep him talking. You tell him the stories Enrik had told you as a child, you tell him of great battles, and your years as a merchant yourself. Of your father and all the misadventures you’d gotten into under his watch.

“Who are yours?” He asks as night has fallen, the ice lining the delicate edges of your ears, and you’re forced to wrap the cloth tighter across your nose and face—the kohl around your eyes stiff. Yours. You had so many once, people who belonged to only you—to no one else. Your jaw clenches because being yours was a death sentence; it painted a bull’s eye on whoever sat in your chest like an extension of yourself. Loving you was suicide.

You don’t answer, humming quietly at the back of your throat, and clutching him a little tighter—that would have to be answer enough. The weight in your chest gained a few more stones to pull you down, but you can hardly feel the addition anymore. Always heavier than the moment before. The snow if lightening the further from the mountain’s you get—the trees beginning to sprout from the ice fields holds off just enough of the wind that you could lover the scarf over your nose.

When you feel the flicker of fire in the distance—the faint outline of Polis’ wall—it is far too late. You haven’t noticed that the boy nestled into you was frighteningly still, that he hadn’t spoken in so long. You press a hand to his curved back and fell nothing, but you shove that away as the horse’s movements making that impossible. But you can’t feel his heart against your own, you can only feel the cold claws curled into the fabric of your shirt. His small cold face pressed into your neck.

You must stiffen because your closest _jusbrota_ moves to flank you, his bright blue eyes examining you from head to toe before landing on the mop of near white hair below your chin. You shake your head, and look forward again. You are death.

How long until the graveyard in your soul has a marker for you?

* * *

You are a crumbling kingdom—the monarchy has left you alone with a tarnish gold crown slung low around your neck—the jagged points tipped up under your chin, making your throat long and clenched, and your tongue heavy and inarticulate. You will not survive if you continue on like this—finding new warm skin every night, falling into mortal sin with the ease of moonlit waves on the beach. You’ve denied yourself so long because you had considered it a marker of loyalty—to a dead girl, and the love you had for her. But she had been just that—a girl, hardly a woman, just as you had been. And the love you had cultivated for her out of tangled graveyard vines and worn dug up earth had been extraordinary. It had been an inspiration how she had held you between her hands as something precious—something to cherish.

But those moments had been a blink of your eyes in the grand scheme of things—she’d been a phase, a stretch of peace that had battled the churning struggle that existed in every other moment. Life was struggle—it was a fight, and the faster you accepted that, the easier that fight became. You had more than bare hands and half curled fists, more than exposed skin and closed eyes—blades, and armor, and quick eyes. It was the difference between life and death—between living, and surviving.

You shouldn’t think about how you’ve extinguished half the candles in your tent, the shadows dancing through patches of darkness as you stake a claim to the pulse beneath your lips. “ _Heda_.” Never your name; you are a legend spending the night amongst mortals no matter how much you wish you could simply be a person—be someone trying to wrest your demons from your heart with hot skin and aching muscles. This woman had poured your wine all night—the potent brew from the small village enough to addle even your mind. With every top up, her fingers lingered longer along the plains of your knuckles, or the curve of your bicep.

You’d been impervious at the start—your eyes falling over the woman with indifference, chin tipped up and eyes shadowed by kohl. But with each pass you noticed things you wish you hadn’t. The exact shade of her eyes—darker than night, the smooth copper of her skin, and the lush curve of her waist. It wasn’t long before your own fingers had curled through hers and pulled her into your lap—the full tanker of wine had been deposited onto the table carelessly while she settled into you. Your warriors had cheered and hollered, far too loudly—the battle still bright and hot in their veins. You had always been the coolest temperament at these feasts—the collected mind at the end of the night that made sure all had been settled and set for the night.

But with her lips pressed to you jaw, and her eager hands curled into the braids of your hair—you think they can manage without you for one night—that this happens far too often for far too long, you don’t wish to think on. She is no warrior and her muscles are softer and strain easily, but she wraps legs around your waist as you half-stumble half-march toward your tent. Pressed into you like this, she is hot and wanting, and you need the desperate mewls that will spill from her throat when you slid down her body and take her in your mouth. You can hardly remember the clawing hands that had torn her clothes away—shirt hanging at her waist obscenely as you trace your tongue around her belly button.

“ _Heda_.” Her chant is hoarse and raspy, her throat raw from each finish you have milked from her quickly tiring body—her stamina is reaching the end, and you can still hear your demons chittering in your ears. Pressing into her with two fingers until she is tight and hot around you—her fingers have lost their grip on your back, pawing uselessly at your shoulders while she keens from the back of her throat. Your tongue following the curve of her breast, tasting the salt of her sweat. When she cries this time, you see how her eyes roll to the back of her head—her body going limp with each tremble. You milk her body of its very last response, until her raw throat produces a weak whimper.

Your body aches, your mind foggy and misplaced, but all the light had gone from the tent—leaving you washed in shadow. It seems appropriate how she searches the furs for you, unable to see through the dark—but you can manage just fine. Green eyes take in how she is spread lewdly across your bed, her thighs boneless and open—she is unashamed of her position, and you think she had no reason to be. She is beautiful—dark and smooth and unscarred—but you are the one that should be ashamed. Still mostly dressed, you linger in the dark, avoiding the wandering hand searching for you. Your eyes squeeze closed and your fists press into them—trying to control the thoughts that had let you become this person.

You can’t move away from her with your thoughts turned so internally—and she glances across your knee, feeling the rough fabric of your pants, and curling her fingers into it. She’s on you in only a moment—even though you know she must be exhausted—and her soft hands bracket your jaw as she kisses you. Your eyes are still pressed closed, and you realize this is the first time your lips have touched—she must be able to taste herself in your mouth as her tongue traces the sharp line of your teeth. She seems so much stronger while bending your forward to possess your mouth—and you let her. This nameless woman still trembling from the night you’ve given her. Or taken from her.

You mind is quiet for these moments, with her small hands pushing at the fabric still covering you—uncovering scarred and inked skin, and hard unforgiving lines. She worships you with reverent fingers, and seems to know when to capture your lips with hers—swallowing the unsteady breaths you’d released unknowingly. She isn’t Costia, and this isn’t peace—but for the first time in so long, you don’t feel like you are at war. Your demons have settled into skin being mapped with light fingertips and an eager mouth—you can focus on the burn in your stomach far too long ignore, and when you tumble into oblivion, you linger eyes.

It is quiet, it is calm.

You pull her to your chest when she is asleep and murmuring nonsense, her body small and pliant, curling into you instinctually—your heart is pounding steadily, and her fingers paw hopelessly at the skin above it. Searching for the heart so many believed you to be without—she knows differently now, but you don’t believe she will tell. She doesn’t have any piece of you in her possession, at least not for more than this night—you are incapable. Those pieces of you had been left and forgotten so long ago.

“ _Heda_.” The lips pressing to the underside of your chin murmur, a happy moan and her body arches into you, and you wonder what she dreams of. If your arms fell like peace to her. In the morning you’ll be gone, and reality will sling tight around your throat once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has not been edited at all; but tomorrow I'm going to take a look and fix all my inevitable mistakes. 8)


	7. we love you, you idiot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You can’t keep—you’re not some sacrifice we’re all willing to make.” He’s angry—you don’t think you’ve ever seen him angry. You lift your hand from the grip of your blade to curl into the heavy fabric of his clothes—holding onto him, because you didn’t want him to leave you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter seven! The scenes will be getting longer, because the time between each will be days and weeks, instead of months and years. The 100 will be falling next chapter, in theory, but since the scenes come to me as I start writing, I can only say that loosely. I haven't exactly decided how I'm going to go about getting through the plot of the show. Do you want a reenactment from Lexa's perspective, or maybe a little plot tweaking; I haven't really given it too much thought. As always, excuse any mistakes, I am the worst editor on the face of the planet. 8)
> 
> As always, feel free to follow me on tumblr: **civilorange**

Loneliness doesn’t always mean you are alone—it is being the rock in the center of a ferocious river. You are sturdy and strong; parting the crushing force of water barreling down on you—never budging, never flinching. Equal distance from either shore, and never moving any closer—you are rooted to your spot because if you give ground, you will surely be taken away by the currant. Loneliness doesn’t care how long you’ve been there, or how much you long for dry land—the moment it is able to move you, it will, without hesitation because sometimes you are the only obstacle able to stand in the way.

It isn’t until you’ve begun living somewhere other than your own mind, that you realize you’ve released everyone from their obligation of caring for you. You tell yourself it is for them—that you are doing them a favor, because you are touched by death. It lingers in the tips of your fingers, as readily as it does the edge of your blade. At night, when you sit awake in the dark, you think it must be strongest on your lips—or possibly in your heart—in the places you share sparingly, because the people who have known those places are the worst off. They have suffered more than most—they had been dismantled, piece by excruciating piece, until nothing had been left to mourn. You are what remains of them—a bloodless wound agonizing through each day silently, because you have lost your voice—have lost the words sufficient enough to explain exactly why you had taken your heart between your own two hands—and ripped it asunder.

At night you sit with your ghosts; the dark nourishes the boldness of their lines, the brutality of their wounds. On your better days, they visit you whole; like they had simply stepped out of your life and gone someplace wonderful. Smooth untouched skin, eyes so bright they had never known suffering, smiles full and unhindered—this is how you want to remember them. As people who had deserved more than they had gotten—who should have had peace, and happiness, and love.

But on your worse nights, they spill across the floor mottled with blood and bruised with pain—Costia’s head tumbles aimlessly on the ground, her dark eyes never leaving you. She never blinks, and when the sun awakens your own eyes are dry—you realize you hadn’t either. Enrik is silent, his large frame bent so inappropriately you know he had been broken—snapped in two like a branch or bone. Sometimes they talk, sometimes they just stare—you had asked them to be quiet so many time over, to stop speaking, you hadn’t realized the silence was worse. The quiet accusations and wordless blame—you had done this to them.

You lay on your side, eyes pressed shut so you don’t have to see them—madness had slipped into you like a virus. It spilled through you like gasoline waiting for a spark, a single reason to erupt and char you from the inside. Is that what it means to be the commander; to be intrinsically mad? Had the man Anya loved been wrought with shadows as well—shades of people he had sacrificed because he had already sold every piece of himself?

Only in these moments before sleep can you release the tensile strength of your spine to loosen and your shoulders to curl inward; you feel her breath long before her phantom fingers trail absently up your sides. You can’t remember how it felt when Costia touched you; but you know this is only an echo. The slightest reminder of her warmth against the chill of your skin, pulling her around you like a cloak, wearing her like armor when you’d been stripped of your own. In these half-conscious seconds before you slip under, you can almost forget that she has been dead for years—you can’t trust your memories, because they are foggy and weighed down with things you pretend you don’t possess.

Sadness. Anger. Love. Exhaustion.

“You’re tired.” Her voice was off—you can’t tell exactly why, but her voice was too raspy, too choked—Costia had always spoken smoothly and with rhythm. The lilt was clipped and sluggish—an echo of your own voice, though the intonation was all Costia—that you could never forget. The soothing tip to the end of her sentences, the searching inquiry that was never really said—she cared, so _damned_ much. And it had killed her. “You’ve worn yourself out these last few years, _Skai._ ”

All at once, you remember pirate ships in the clouds, and the marauders that manned their masts—Costia had made it seem so possible that there lived a whole world up beyond the clouds. Slipping through the stars and no one on the ground was ever the wiser—except Costia. She called you _Skai_ , but her dominion was the clouds—you’d been too focused on what happened on the ground, you very rarely looked up. The sky had nothing you wanted, nothing you needed—your kingdom was dirt, and trees, and mountains.

“Only a few more.” Your face is pressed into the crook of your arm, eyes still closed and the breath leaving your lungs is something of a sigh—only a few more. No commander has lived past twenty-five; you had held fear in your chest at first, tight and constricting—your expiration date growing closer with each day ended. But you almost long for the end, pine for closure because no matter how many steps forward you manage—how many clans you drag into your new world—there never seems to be an end. Another battle just over the horizon, another war fought, another people to conquer.

“No, no,” her fingers comb through your hair; and you know her fingers should snag in knots and twists, but there isn’t a single tug—because she isn’t truly there. She’s a disease in your mind, a sickness in your blood, and you need her desperately. In a few seasons, you could be together again. “You won’t be seeing us for a very long time; and we won’t be mad. We promise.” Promises aren’t things that can be kept; they are fickle and slick and they slip through fingers like grains of sand on the shore. Washing out with the tide, smoothed over and forgotten.

“Come on, Alexander.” His voice is softer than it should be—even when he’d told you stories in the dark, his voice had a certain gruffness—it was wispy and tipped sideways, but you know Enrik by the tilt of his syllables. The middle of words clicked, his tongue snapping off the roof of his mouth—a habit you had picked up from him young, and still carry with you. “Win the fight, or just don’t lose so badly; you have so much left to do.” His cool hand pressed down over your ankle, your toes curling; you could feel the dip in the mattress where he sat near your feet.

The time between breaths seemed like an eternity—entire forevers slipping into the seconds you could spare. Little blinks of time that seemed to be whole lives pressed into milliseconds and lost moments—they lived on that borrowed time now, those stolen minutes. You would steal whole lifetimes if you could gift it to them—press breath back into their chest, and life into their eyes. But the world didn’t work like that—they were gone, except for the hooks tucked snug into the broken fissures in your heart.

“I’ll tell you one more story,” he promised, and even though you don’t like promises, you believe him this time—it is in the finality of his tone. One last story. “And then you can rest.” Costia’s imagined warmth lined against your back, and Enrik’s cool hand rubbing at the bone sharp slope of your ankle. It eased the grip you always had on the dagger beneath your pillow; allowed your fingers to uncurl and tuck into the cool fabric of your bedding. They made you feel foolishly safe—these ghosts of yours.

“In the beginning there was only the ground—flat and empty, no animals, and no great forests. But as time passed life grew—tall trees and wide oceans so far the ground could no longer see the horizon. Could no longer say goodnight to the stars as they slipped away each morning.” Enrik had loved sunsets—he’d talk about them like other seconds had spoken about favorite weapons, or large battles. He spoke of the colors in ways you had been enamored with—how many shades of orange he had known, how many shades of blue. He held his breath every evening when the sun went to sleep, exhaling into the dark like it could make the night easier.

“Every night, the ground would ask the stars where they went—why they left every morning, and the stars never answered. They talked about the clouds, and the sky, and even the beautiful things they could see from their perch up above—the waterfalls and mountains. They told the ground stories—of hunters and lovers, each night it was a new hero for the ground to fall in love with.” You wonder if Enrik had loved anyone; had been able to hold someone at night and forget the blood dried into the creases of his palms. You’d had Costia—she’d made you feel human in a way that was impossible to replicate.

“And when the stars ran out of stories, and went to sleep that last time—the ground feared they would never return. That the night would be dark and lonely without them; you see, the ground had fallen in love with the stars, each and every one that hung so far away in the sky. But the ground was afraid of love—on its back it held forests, and mountains, and great rivers. It didn’t have the luxury of love, so it would be quiet—silently pining to see the stars again.” You could understand the ground’s plight—Costia had been a star; smart and bright, and seemingly so far away, in the sky she loved so very much. Even Enrik had been brilliant in his own way—a boy who had bucked tradition just enough to have been able to love you in return.

“Even though the ground said nothing, the stars knew—it was in the beautiful flowers that spread across the meadows, and the colorful birds that flocked every morning. You see, the stars had loved the ground so very much—since they had peaked out from behind the black of night and begun telling their stories. Now that their love was returned, they drifted closer—one was bold and drifted too close. Only to realize that they had gone too far and began to tumble—diving through clouds and splashing into the great water below.” Your heart ached for the stars—for Costia and Enrik—whose fatal flaw was loving you; they were stars that had come to close, and fell because of it. Your ghosts could taste the prickling sadness in the air, pressing close to set you between them.

“The last star, brighter than all the rest, watched as each one before her tumbled from the clouds—spilling into rivers and so many into the great water. She knew it was dangerous to love the ground, that if she got too close, she too would fall. But love is courage, love is hope—and yes, love is sacrifice.” He sounds so far away, his voice an echo in the dark, slipping through the night to lull you those last few steps into sleep. He’d always been able to ease the restlessness from your bones, and the weary weight from your shoulders—when you’d been a child, and he’d been your friend.

“But this star was so very smart—she closed her eyes and tipped out of the sky diving through the clouds fast as any meteor. Not toward the water, fore she didn’t wish to extinguish her light—but toward the highest mountain. Crashing into the top, she hadn’t very far to fall at all—the crumbling mountain breaking her plummet.” You know exactly which star he’s talking about—the quick bright star that spun across the horizon only once when you were together. It was less frequent than the rest—you’ve only seen it a handful of times in the passing years, but when you do, you feel something. A connection to the people who weren’t there—to the people who would never return; it was chaotic and inconsistent, and you wonder when you’ll see it again.

“If only—,” you’re barely talking now, and it should truly fall into place that both Enrik and Costia have gone quiet, that they no longer sooth hands across your curled shoulders, or through your tangled hair. “—a star could crush the mountain.”

* * *

Why did it feel like goodbye when they each press cool lips to your forehead, murmuring, “I love you.”

* * *

You’d heard the term before, _caught a bullet_ —warriors from the mountain’s borders used it liberally, well versed in the action. You could dissect a _gonakru_ by their phrases— _born to hang, you’ll never drown_ , were near the boat people; _take the heat_ , were the warriors in the desert. Small little differences you’d always been aware of, things that allowed you to know your people more readily; feel them in your bones. But sometimes knowing the phrase, does no justice to the action—you’d caught two bullets. One through the outer edge of your thigh—through and through, the metal demon having gone clattering off into the brush. The other snarled into your shoulder; it had clicked off your guard, and dove away from your heart and lungs, digging through meat and muscle and lodging against your collarbone.

Every movement was a horrible scratch of mushroomed metal on worried bone; and all those times you’d thought about immortality, and eternity—the little hooks that cling to your spirit, even if it they don’t your body. Twenty five seems so impossibly far away—entire eons as you burst through another set of bushes and end up tumbling head over boots into the root system of a large tree. Thankfully the blood had been caught in all your layers of fabric—hardly any trail to be spoken of, except the broken branches from your mad dash through the foliage.

You’d committed the worst act—you’d become impatient. You’d remembered that you are indeed mortal, and didn’t have all the time in the world—you would not live through the bombs like the trees, or crush rock like the rivers. You were soft, and temporary—and you knew those qualities wouldn’t help your people, not if you died long before even trying. You’d gathered warriors like a greedy child does sweets—hording them close and building anticipation. The reapers had been seen exiting the mountain; their tunnels more and more foreboding as their numbers grew.

You knew large armies brought the acid fog—the toxic clouds had taken too many, but a scattered _gonakru_ who could strike hard and fast? Could gut the mountain like a doe for dinner—you’d almost salivated at the idea. Your blood hot, your veins burning, you began the chant— _jus drien jus daun_. Their eyes were bright and feverish, their hands curled into bestial claws—you know you are worse than them at even their most savage. Because that bloodlust doesn’t quiet reach your heart—not like it does theirs—you are a monster of a different ilk.

You grow cold when the blood begins to spill, when bodies go still and silent on the ground—when the air it putrid with death and the ground moist in red. You think too clearly, too in touch with your mind to claim any disassociation from the violence you are capable—and oh, are you capable of it.

Sitting in the out cove of above ground roots, you tuck your body into the inner edge; settling quietly into the dark so that you may examine the new holes you’d acquired. You’d tied a strip of cloth tight around your leg, pressing against the gaping wounds—excruciating, but you’d seen too many brilliant warriors die from blood loss. Your shoulder is what threatens to topple you with finality—the red was lost into your commander’s cowl, the fabric looped under your arm and down your back. Your clothes are wet with blood, and the dimming of color said you hadn’t much time.

Something crashes gently through the green—too softly to be a suited mountain man, but you pull your sword from its sheath nonetheless; willing your loose fingers to tighten for just a few moments. Long enough to run whoever it was through; you may die, but you will do so as ferocity in motion. Just as you plan your lunge forward to carve your blade through calf and stomach; a familiar voice drifts through the wood.

“ _Heda_.” Brows pinch as you try to place the owner—soft, drifting, with so much intent. Daxon. The name clicks into place with only a moment’s thought, and you let out something that may have been a huff—exhaling sharply through your nostrils to alert him of your location. Your fingers have lost their dexterity, so the weapon simply rests across your lap—no longer able to thread it back into its sheath.

Daxon appears as a cloaked shadow, sinking into the dark of your hovel with grace and poise—he is weighed down by his medicinal bag, his eyes tired, and his frame hunched. He’d always been so very good at war—he preferred to save lives than take them, but he had ice in his blood when the fighting started. He’d comb through bodies and decide who could be saved—and put those who couldn’t, out of their misery. He never gained marks for these kills—for the same reason you didn’t—there would be too many. You killed to protect your people, he killed to save them pain—you were necessary evils, donned in the shroud of savior.

“Your gaggle of men couldn’t stop wallowing about how they failed you.” That is how he opens; throwing his shawl off and approaching you with open red stained hands—he’d found your men, a weight leaves your shoulders. “You led them off alone?” There’d been enough of them alive that you’d calculated the risk—you would be quicker alone, and the mountain men seemed to know who you were. A prize to be snagged. They had pained no attention to the wounded parties, and the few able bodies collecting them—not when they could sing through the forest on your heels, trying to capture _the commander_. Of course, you hadn’t planned to _catch_ two bullets; but even losing blood by the moment, and vision spilling into black at the edges—you’d still been leagues better through the wood than those _gothrumous_ ; tunnel rats.

“They wanted the commander,” the red fabric looping around your wound feels like a python cutting off your air, “I felt inclined to give them a chance.” Daxon gives you the same exasperated look he’d often tossed your way when you’d been younger—you were brash, where he’d been patient, you’d been loud, when he’d been quiet. You’d adopted so many characteristics from him because while war favored the bold—it killed the reckless. _Patience is a virtue_ , that belonged to people of the wood—the forest was never completely quiet, but it was filled with so much, if you were willing to listen.

“You’re an idiot.” He growled, unclipping the buckle that kept your pauldron in place; and despite the heat in his tone, he moves you gently, fingers curled through the short hairs on the back of your neck, leaning your forward into his own shoulder, removing the crimson sash and heavy armor. It had become so natural to wear it, you hadn’t even thought to remove it to move more efficiently. “You can’t keep—you’re not some sacrifice we’re all willing to make.” He’s angry—you don’t think you’ve ever seen him angry. You lift your hand from the grip of your blade to curl into the heavy fabric of his clothes—holding onto him, because you didn’t want him to leave you.

“You keep doing this to yourself because you think if you don’t, they’ll turn away from you.” You can’t deduce who exactly _they_ are, but your chest tightens, your heart stutters—and you’re reminded that you do indeed have one. It’s been shattered and mended a thousand times, and you had hoped it would grow numb to the pain, but it hasn’t. Pain tolerance never seems to go so deep; but you’ve learned to walk with your demons, to break your fast with your nightmare.

“I do this, because I am _heda_.” Danger, bravery, hope—a dead man had been these things, and they’d loved him for it. You tell yourself you don’t want their love—because you are a cursed spirit—but so much of you is still that northern orphan, who had to name yourself, because you’d had no family to give you that honor. The trikru had given you a name— _heda_ —and they asked you to stay.

“We love you, you idiot.” Hissing his words into the shell of your ear as he leans you back into the corner, already red fingers toying with the torn fabric of your shoulder, searching for the angle of the bullet. “Your warriors would cut their own eyes out if you only asked—not because you are _heda_ , but because you are _you_.” You can’t school your expression; widening eyes and slack mouth. Who are you, if not heda? That young girl who had refused the mantle had died; she’d slipped away silently one night, and no one had seemed to miss her. You especially, because that girl would not have been able to shoulder the burdens you do—would not be able to trudge on with a thousand dead sitting in her soul. Not like you do.

Daxon had always known how to be gentle, you knew this because you’d always been his practice doll—Indra would frown at you both, lips pinched at the corners because she didn’t wish to smile. You were _heda_ , you were older by half a season—you’d been born closer to spring, him to autumn—and you were bickering because you didn’t want him plucking gravel from your wounds with metal tongs. He used words you didn’t know just to sound right—healers words that were just gibberish, you were certain—and once he’d put his healer’s tool down, you’d tackle him and put him into a proper headlock.

You’ve both grown since then—whole heads, and a thousand kills—and it seems an impossible journey. Indra still frowns when you bicker; always in the solitude of your tent, where no one can see how human you were under layers of command. Both necessary monsters, who knew the burdens of their sacrifice—the pieces they’d had to let go, to be able to do what others couldn’t. To be clear headed when the slaughter began.

“Everything you’ve done; it should be impossible.” He’s trying to distract you with pretty words, so much of your thinks, as his metal tools scratch and dig into the meat of your shoulder, searching for the bullet lodged in there. Everything throbs, everything blackens—but his bloody hand taps against your cheek to keep you awake. “Costia would be proud.” Chin against your chest, wild hair pushed back with bloody fingers and Daxon finally catches the end of the bullet—pulling it free while clasping a hand over your mouth to stifle the sound of pain you hadn’t been able to help. “ _Ah won kru_.”

Maybe it was because you could feel death gripping your ankle, threatening to pull you away from your body—to toss your spirit into another unassuming babe—but you couldn’t stop the tears. They gathered in your lashes and spilled through the blood and kohl on your face, tracing the edge of your jaw and down your bloody throat. Costia wouldn’t have been proud—she would hate you for the choices you’d made, she wouldn’t have been able to love you. She’d been able to pretend you a person in the comfort of your bed—in the silence of your chambers—she’d even been able to filter the rushed, harsh speeches in the war room. She wouldn’t have understood the sacrifices—the slaughters—the examples that had to be made.

“Costia is dead.” Lulling backward as he tended to the fresh blood, slathering salve over it, keeping it in place with strips of cloth—it was tight, and uncomfortable, but you knew survival didn’t always feel good. It was harder than giving up, it was more brutal than death—it continued on despite everything.

“She is.” Amiable agreement as he leaned back on his ankles, watching with dark, dark eyes—you think you see so much of Indra in his gaze. Quiet, intense, weighing—but the soft edges were all Daxon. The parts of him that sought to heal, and not dismantle—that particular was your specialty.

“She used to say that the world was a machine—one of those great flying beasts the world before had. Each person had a purpose—healers, and warriors, and bone men, and farmers. _Nomon_ wanted me to be a warrior, to fight with her—to be her second. But Cos—Cos showed me I could be just as important, just as useful, healing, instead of killing.” This had been before you had shown up in Polis—when they’d still been young, when life hadn’t already decided for them. Daxon had already decided, inside himself, to be a healer when you grew to know him. Indra had still tried to wrap his hands around weapons, to break him and mold him—but he’d been stalwart. Solid.

“She called us cogs—these great circular gears that made everything possible. One would catch another, and another—until the entire machine worked.” His bloody fingers pulling something small from his satchel—a matted gold trinket you’d seen Costia toy with once or twice. A circle with little edges sticking up around; a wagon wheel, or the wheel at the helm of a ship. There were two, and he held them next to each other, matching the edges and when one rotated—the other did as well. The concept slanted into place in your mind— _cogs_ —and you watched him with sad eyes.

“One cog has to start turning though—it has to move so that it may bring all the others with it.” He stopped moving one, so they both remained motionless. “It doesn’t matter how many cogs there are—or how great the machine—if that first cog doesn’t decide to start turning.” Looking at the thin little slips of metal that had been gifted to him by a dead girl. “There’s only stillness—only death.” He had always been able to make peace with life—with the fight—why not fight, if the alternative is death?

The gold had grown tacky with blood, his fingers worrying over their smooth surface until he leaned forward, pressing his thumb to the space between your brows; leaving the little golden cog set there. It stuck to the sweat and blood pervading your face and body—sitting their quietly while Daxon smiled at you. You were the cog in motion—dragging everyone else with you into your new world. Where the clans were united, where the mountain crumbled—where children didn’t have learn fear young just to survive. So many hadn’t fought you, they had trusted the direction you turned them—they had given no resistance, so that when one cog did stick, did refuse to move with you; the sheer force of all those that did jostled them into motion.

You don’t realize you’ve fallen asleep until you are startled awake—a hand over your mouth, and another pinning the grip on your blade. Your weapon half raised, but kept stationary by Daxon who had turned to focus on the night. You can hear it too—even through the ringing in your ears, you can hear the silence of the forest. _Patience is a virtue_ , you may not have been of the trikru, not originally, but you knew the phrase well—silence meant danger. Once he knew you were awake and present, he began tucking his supplies away, throwing his warm cloak around your shoulders; tying it in such a way that your shoulder didn’t move too much.

“That is treason.” You murmur through the fabric covering the lower half of your face, struggling to stand so that you may observe him. You cannot see through the dark to know he rolls his eyes—your armor fits him a little too snugly, pinching his chest and snapping aggressively into place. It looks strange to see it on someone else.

“We’ll worry about that back at camp; you like this damned armor too much to leave.” You snort, because though it may be true, you would rather not show any sentimentality. Daxon pulls you into his side, listening for movement and then pulling his tunic hood over his head, throwing his face into shadow. Even injured you manage decently through the tangle of vegetation; it only caught you twice before you tugged yourself free and continued on. You could hear the waterfall and river, rushing not too far in the distance—it would bring you toward the nearest village. Just out of the mountain men’s reach—they never strayed too far.

The sound that cuts through the night is fierce; it rings in your ears and splits your mind—a inhuman screech that seems to originate not too far behind you. You can hear the snarls of reapers, the careless tossing of bodies through the green, and you feel Daxon tense—his shoulders tightening to pull you into his side as you quicken. The warrior in you wishes to fight the approaching enemy; but rational thought says you would not win. You must choose your battles, it would be senseless death.

Reaching the edge of the canyon, the water far below, the waterfall just to your right, Daxon pauses—his face pinching harshly; dark, dark eyes scanning for an escape just as yours are. If you were healthy you’d be able to double back easily, cut through the dense foliage and sprint toward safety—but you are almost dead weight, and Daxon is exhausted for carrying you. He releases his hold on you, stepping away to watch you sway on your own—the reapers are getting closer, the beams of light from the mountain men closer yet.

“Daxon?” You sound like a child—confused as he smiles at you, tucking the hood closer around your head, a hand on your shoulder steadying you. You are going to pass out, you are going to die without a fight. When a beam of light washes over you both, it passes you without thought—without care—and settles on Daxon. The gold trinkets on your commander’s sash glinting, the crimson vibrant; you hear them sound _the commander_ in hushed whispers before you realize why exactly he had chosen to wear your armor.

“Victory stands on the back of sacrifice,” he whispers, still smiling, though even his dark skin seems paler—he’s afraid—he steps closer to grip your shoulder, to keep you looking at him—even though the world is turning black. “Just not you, just not today.”

And then he pushes—strong enough so that your body clears the edge of the cliff, enough to watch him turn and throw himself into the forest, bringing the reapers and mountain men with him. As the wind whistles past your ears, and the waterfall roars—you hear a few carefully placed gunshots. _Pop, pop._

And then you hit the river hard, and everything goes black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come say hey on tumblr. You can find me @ **civilorange**


	8. war can be very messy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> These child foreigners knew there was danger lurking in the woods, they knew to look into the dark with caution—but they could not abide, they could not dig into their brittle stardust bones and draw forth the fear that truly made life on the ground.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we have the 100! They've finally decided to fall from orbit for us; I'm still deciding how exactly I'm going to go about the plot of the show. I'm thinking a slightly altered parallel; something that could keep pace with the timeline of the show, but just ever so slightly different. I wanted to note that I haven't watched the first season since it aired, so this first chapter is based on my hazy memories of what exactly happened those first few episodes; so take it with a grain of salt. This actually makes me want to get on rewatching the first season, I've been meaning to. Also the story summary has been changed a bit to reflect the milestone.
> 
> As always, please ignore my horrible spelling and poor grasp of the english language. 8)  
> Feel free to send me prompts, or just follow me on tumblr @ **civilorange**.

Standing in the empty war room, you think how far everything has come—the table that used to reach your chest when you first took command now barely brushed your hips, the throne that had dwarfed your wily frame now fit your regal slant perfectly. You’ll be eighteen summers in another moon, an adult already in every right—your life is painted across your skin, your story told until this point in black ink and white scars. Your dead no longer trail you like imprinted young, they have slipped to a darker place, a place you cannot reach them—only in the split second before sleep, when you can still hear _ain_ , and _toward the sun_ , and _not you_. You know they’re waiting for you on the other side, patiently holding ground until you venture into the next life. Whoever knows what you’ll find to conquer there—the bone men certainly don’t know.

Instead of their ghost, you hold your cherished dead on you; reminders of the people who had shaped you into who you needed to be. Who taught you the hardest lessons you had never wanted to learn—the things that had added weight to your shoulders, who shackled your ankles and tethered you to this life of immortal expiration.

Your father’s wood hilted dagger sits on your right hip; the last possession of a girl who had never been a daughter, but had been a very cunning man’s apprentice. A soulless merchant who would have sold the moon if he’d been able to smuggle it into his pocket—he had taught you that your buyer need not even say a word, for you to know what they need. Or better, what they _want_. He had split the world not into tribes, or skills, or even morality—but into something much simpler. The air of importance, could make even the smartest, or the strongest, or the cruelest fall into line. Men are sheep—and you are a wolf.

Costia’s words could not be poured into a dagger, or a set of armor—so you wear them on your skin. Ice blue ink wrapped like her arms around your ribs, curling over the impressions of your bones and dipping below your skin. She rides on your right arm like a warning of patience—that not everything must be solved with bloodletting and violence. That the first strike could very well be the last. Your heart lurches when you must wipe blood from the crisp reminders of her gentle heart; in all the ways she thought you more evolved, you were nothing more than a beast willing to be tame for the right person. To tuck claws away so that you may not rend her without thought. This impossible world was possible because she’d let you believe in it—she encouraged the absurdity, she coddled the fear. She let you be a person, and not simply a warmonger.

Enrik’s sword sits high on your left side, just lower than your elbow so you could drape your forearm against the guard—the loose slanted posture unnerving to new and veteran warriors alike. The weapon had been taken from the store of what the whetkru rebellion had in their possession. It had seemed impossibly small for the massive man Enrik had grown to be; delicate and fine, the polish matted but cared for. _Strik_ _pasa_ , little sparrow; the words carved into the hilt in practiced handwriting. His story had clung to your bones as you’d wrapped still bloody fingers around the leather sheath—a beautiful weapon, with a blade that had never been used. A gift he’d never been able to give.

Daxon’s cog sits between your brows, gold and slicked clear of blood; you wear it with your kohl to remind you of sacrifice. He had believed in your ability to move the world to your whim; like a boy who still believed in the legends of old. Of women who could reach into the sky and tear pieces of sun asunder and barren the earth with their heat. Indra had stepped closer than she’d dared since you’d grown past her chin—her dark thumb tracing the edge of the trinket—searching your green eyes for something, dark hues flickering. Whatever it had been she sought, she must have found, because her fist was harsh against the metal of her armor as she stepped back.

You’d called the clan leaders together—sent messengers with the fastest horses to collect the leaderships that had bent their knee to you. This coalition—this _won gedakru_ —seemed impossibly fickle, the thinnest sapling in the middle of a great storm. The wind bending it clean over until its top touched the ground, threatening to snap the sapling trunk in two—but those who don’t live in the forest don’t know that the sapling is pliant. It bends, and twists—but it will not break. It never developed the rigidity of the other trees—it is adaptable and wily.

These leaders run their providences, they keep their clan names, and you’d never felt particularly inclined toward one set of customs—but they understand that they are yours. You are heda, and you will not abide by their arbitrary lines any longer; you are not something to be fought over and found. A prize to be had at the end of some battle. You are azgeda by blood, trikru by training, whetkru by spirit and aloulan by heart—the people who had made you into the creature you are, were from every stretch of this ground, _your_ ground. You will not tell them how to harvest the plains, or wrangle their horses—you do not own their lives, just their loyalty.

When the torches are lit, and the commotion outside suggests your leaders have arrived you do not go to greet them—you remain slanted into your throne with the boneless grace of a jungle cat. You’ve learned leadership in battle; you never go to greet a foe if you are conceding higher ground. You do not untether any of your weapons from their sheaths, but you do tap your fingers against the rigid arm of your chair. Watching as shadows dance across the edges of your tent; they are mingling together, men and women who had lost their power, who had been ousted by nothing more than a child. Twelve in total—you’d been appointed as the speaker for the trikru, but you had turned down that honor. You are not one of them—you are not a queen, or chieftain, or lord, or captain—you are above them, you are the sovereign to the land under every one of their feet, no matter how far their capitol may be from where you sit.

You hear them long before they slip into your sight—the slightest of steps that prowl from the darker edge of the camp; where the torches are spaced further apart, where shadows still reside. Her armor is gray, light enough to slip over the heavier furs that ensconce her body—it makes her look larger than she is. Dark hair twisted around and through beads, pushed back away from her face to give the appropriate amount of appreciation of the white clay swiped across her eyes. Thick paste that went from temple to temple over the bridge of her nose, one line went down her left cheek and under her chin. Gray-green eyes that looked lighter than they had any reason to be stared at you—laid eyes on you for the first time.

“ _Heda._ ” She says your title with all proper respect, her head tipping gracefully into a half bow as her curled fist hit the hard armor on her left shoulder. Her lilt was of the north, the azgeda, a more rumbling tone than most of the tribes, hard at the edges but coaxing in the middle. You know who she is immediately—you can see a dead woman in the slope of her nose, the thin line of her lips, and the green of her eyes—the same green of your own eyes. You’d forced her mother onto her knees, had looked at her through the cold glint of your anger, and explained what was going to happen. How your sword would cleave through her muscles, bones, and tendons, how her head would bound across the floor—and how her daughters would be invited to see her disgraced corpse, and pledge fealty to her killer.

“ _Ehko kom azgeda_.” This was the younger daughter, the warrior, who took after her father, more than her mother. A deadly adversary if there ever was one, she’d be away from the nation during your campaign—no, you supposed that wasn’t the proper term of what you had done at their capitol. Your slaughter. You’d carved out their place of power, and in that vacuumed claimed dominion over all. Echo watches you with poorly veiled hatred, you are so familiar with the burning rage she must feel in her chest—the need for blood, the desire for carnage.

“I grew very concerned when the water rebelled.” Her finger drums against the dagger at her hip, her smile a carnivore’s grin, the metallic glint on her eye was blood and death. She held it in her soul like many did fond thoughts. You know she’d been present when Costia had been captured—you know she must have taken so much pleasure in pulling blades across the smooth dark skin you’d grown to cherish. The ice queen hadn’t the heart for torture—and her elder daughter thought herself too refined for those primal urges—but this warrior was not above that cruel fact of life. She reveled in it—it boiled in her blood and rattled in her bones. You know this azgeda beast had been the one who looked into Costia’s amber eyes and removed her head.

“A mild set back,” you don’t correct your posture, you remain draped in your throne—from each prong of the antlers hangs a sigil for the twelve clans you collected. Azgeda the highest bobble, clear and on display—a toy for you to cherish. Looking at her pointedly, eyes settled and unimpressed, “Coming to heel is not as easy for some, as it is for others.”

You grit your teeth quietly at the anger that prickles behind your eyes, you watch her with impassive delight as she scans the map set on the table—Mount Weather sitting to the north-west, wooden trinkets displaying forward fronts and supply lines. Twelve little statues standing in for the different tribes. You are beyond the need for revenge, you swallow it down so that it might not set you aflame without consideration to the delicate balance you’ve awarded.

“If you could send me to my death without my nation’s wrath, would you?” She is speaking too freely, her tongue getting away with her, and in an instant your anger lessens—it goes to that place in your heart that is cold and distant, where you feel less because you truly feel too much. You are your father’s body seer still, and you see the tremble in her fingers—so miniscule it was nearly impossible to notice. The tightening of her eyes under the white clay stretched temple to temple—you are her monster. You are the devil that sits on her back, the weight on her shoulders, and the stone in her soul.

She’s not afraid of you, not really, her skill in battle is lauded—her precision with the daggers on her belt infamous; but you’ve become something else since that day when you were fourteen summers old and you’d brought her nation to its knees. You are legend made flesh, you are a story told, and she truly can’t comprehend what you are capable of—of how you could turn this tale into one of tragedy for her.

“I would kill you.” She answers her own question, because you haven’t spoken yet—watching as she turns to you, her green eyes backlit with something harder to decipher than hate or fear. Something too human, and not human at all. “I think about it.” Desperation, maybe.

Pushing up with slackened fingers, you rise from your throne and walk around the edge of the table, toward her because you will never walk away—you will never show your back to another serpent. You’d been bitten too many times.

“I don’t think about you at all.” You don’t, you’d never even seen her face, but you’d known who she was—known of the things she’d done, and the battles she’d won. Heard the gory details of what had gone on during Costia’s interrogation. This monster had been one who hadn’t graced your thoughts in too long—since you’d grown out of your need for hot anger, and sordid hatred. “You’re more useful to me alive, than dead.”

She was brilliant in battle, smart and dangerous, able to command an army thrice the size of many of your other generals without strain. As much as you wished to end her existence—as much as it would please you—you had a war to win, and that couldn’t happen if you were losing battles before they were fought.

As you return to your throne, the piece signifying the azgeda being rotated between two of your fingers, you settle calm eyes on her and give one last piece of advice. “You had better make sure that always remains true; war can be very messy.”

* * *

They’ve been bickering for the last few candle marks—well into the night, the seconds they’d brought into the tent as power plays have grown exhausted from standing in the back with their hands set on the hilt of their weapons. The twelve tribe leaders have found enough energy within themselves to not sit, to not lower their voices, to not compromise—on anything. You’d watched them impassively for the first few hours, and then realized they were simply posturing—each one promising to crack the mountain open like an egg and deliver the men within like prizes. Some wished to drown them, some chose to pray to their spirits, some decided a full on assault—each idea was met with eleven rebuttals, eleven reasons why that wouldn’t work, why they were a fool for even thinking it.

You hadn’t said a word, you’d balanced your chin on the slant of your thumb, your other hand slowly rotating your dagger point first into your throne’s arm. You felt, more than saw, their eyes flicker to you every long while, obviously waiting for you to step in and corral them—but you never did. If they wished to bicker like children, you’d let them, because you had to see which ones stepped back, and which forward—who grinned when they spoke of tearing out throats, and which acted like it was an inevitable burden. These were creatures that had owned their corners of the world for long enough to not know how to heel on command—how to handle others with power in their presence.

Echo and Indra were both solid; intelligence that refused to tolerate idiocy, it was unique to see ice and wood stand side by side on anything, even if it was how absolutely foolish the islanders were for their shells and tridents.

When the touches of first light broke through the darkness, you stand—abruptly slamming your dagger deep into the wood of its perch. Twenty four heads snapped in your direction; eyes of all color and shape waiting like pray that had scented a wolf. You wished your father had lived to see this—he’d known from the beginning exactly what you were; he hadn’t needed the rituals and trials, the bloodletting and battles. He’d looking into your eyes as a child and seen the lurking beast, hibernating until it was time to stretch and unravel. To conquer the world.

“The leaders of our world,” hands spread wide to encompass them all, head tipped almost mockingly to the side, lips curling in distaste. “If I was of the mountain, I wouldn’t be concerned either.” You watch their nostrils flare, their jaws tighten. Stepping down from the dais that your throne was set on, you walk around them, watching to see who turned to face you as you passed—and who remained with their backs outward. Who stepped out of your way, and who was willing to brush your shoulder. So much went into the character of a leader—but they all failed their last test, each one without fail.

You meet their eyes, looking for something that said they believed what they said—however impossible, however foolish. And one by one they all cracked—glancing down and away, even if only for a moment. Even Indra and Echo couldn’t maintain, they turned to the map as if it held their faith—as if the answer could be hidden in wooden trinkets and pseudo mountain ranges.

“Since we seem to be sharing ridiculous notions. I had a dream,” you trail off, arm slanted over the long hilt of your sword, hand dangling limply in front of your stomach. You’ve circled the whole war table now, returning to stand before your chair; some expressions shift, their eyebrows pinching together, their lips tightening. “That a star fell from the sky, and crushed the mountain.” Jaw tipped down, expression nonplussed and absent, they seem to be waiting on baited breath—for the end to this tale, to the revelation that must be there.

There is none, of course. You intent to outline how idiotic they all are, and how playing to the deities won’t do any good—but there is a commotion outside. A distant rumbling and a slow echo of frantic voices. You’re the first to break from the silence inside the tent and throw open the flap into the camp. The sun is just at the tops of the trees, the first hints of blue slipping into the sky beyond the quivering white of clouds. There are halos of color forced outward as something breaks through the color and begins to tumble from the sky. It is metal, though you are the only one who knows that—and only because in a past life your spirit had been a mousy woman who’d made death that fell from the sky. They had broken through the sky and turned bright red because of heat— _reflection_. It seemed impossibly small at first, until it grew—and grew—and grew.

“A falling star.” Trian, the lord of the ekwhi—the horse people—exhales, turning to look at you like you’d summoned rain. You’re too busy watching. Many things had fallen from the sky; but they’d been small and off into the empty deserts and the vast waters. This one was angled in neither of those directions; it was diving right toward trikru territory. It felt like ages, but it truly was only moments—seconds, really—as it soared over head. You could feel the faintest touch of heat as it passed, the whistle of wind and the groan of cooling metal—it was no star, but that whispers had already started.

Heda had plucked a star straight from the sky.

You spare only a thought to how long this newest legend would last before you are finding Indra, curling fingers into the buckle of her shoulder guard, you lean in close enough that only she can hear. “Who is minding TonDC?” You have no care for the whispers and awe of those still watching after the trail the comet had left.

“Tristan.” You’re familiar with the man—a savage man who answers only to you, he’d never minded Anya when she’d been your mentor. You turn to watch the distance—you can’t see the crash site, but you can see the distant smoke lifting into the air.

“You ride now; I want to know what that is.” She looks at you—at the hard line of your jaw tightening, at the hand no longer loose but cinched around the hilt of your blade. You were on the precipice of the largest front of war—you had gathered your pieces and set the board, only to have the playing field slanted at the last moment. It could be nothing, but the faster you learn that, the better.

* * *

Revelry at its very core, is savage, it dips into those parts that can’t be bothered with civility and rational, the parts that laugh at danger and wrap itself in the velvet of dark. These invaders are lost to the euphoric rhythm of passion and enthusiasm—you don’t know exactly what they are celebrating, since you find little impressive about their camp, but that doesn’t seem to bother them in the least. They twine and tangle with each other, circling the fire with both reverence and fear; their sky mad eyes bright and feverish in the pitch of night. Their lips spread like jackal maws waiting to snare an unsuspecting rabbit. Nothing about them frightens you, not truly, but there is an inherent madness that prickles the hair on the back of your neck and keeps your senses sharp.

One hundred and one—including dead bodies—children had been spat from the sky, and desecrated your land—they land at the foot of the mountain, only candle marks away, which means that have fallen straight in the middle of your war. If they had fallen to the east of TonDC, you would have let them fester in their euphoric oblivion under water—would have cordoned off the land and cinched tight when they did not suspect a thing. But the good waters at the base of the mountain had made that impossible—catching a boy clean through the chest with a well lofted spear. He’d been babbling mad by the time they’d retrieved him, incoherent with blood loss and pain—he’d sputtered curling tales of the night, lost to hallucinations and fear.

These child foreigners knew there was danger lurking in the woods, they knew to look into the dark with caution—but they could not abide, they could not dig into their brittle stardust bones and draw forth the fear that truly made life on ground. You’d been watching them for a healthy while now, prowling through the dark steps in their shadow, dodging brittle branches and crisp leaves to be the quiet that they were incapable of. You find a dark haired boy in the wood, his dark eyes coal pits of something you are far too familiar with—his frame strong, and his expression somber. He is a dangerous creature, if not in skill, in spirit—you can see the beast lurking below human skin.

A wolf.

Head cocked to the side, you trail him through the branches, stepping into the dark of a tree when he would spin abruptly, dark harbinger eyes looking for something that wasn’t there. He would be considered a hunter to most things in this forest, he would tangle toward the top of the food chain—but you also lurk in the dark with him, and you are the only true predator out this night. Your warriors were afraid, under their metal masks and battle torn grins—you saw the quiver in their eyes. They saw foreigners who fell from the sky like a comet, splitting mad grins with the Mountain’s tongue—they saw danger, and strangeness, and they wished no part of it.

You see children. Your age in summers, no doubt, but their eyes are young, and their skin unblemished—the dirt looks strange on their pale skin and their smooth hands. This boy may have been your kin—a wolf among sheep—but he did not know how to howl, he did not know how to bare teeth, he simply knew that there was something worse than him in the world. He finds himself a small bush rusher—a hog looking something toward sick with its slow gait—he sets upon it with savage intent. Hacking and throwing his weight into the blow, instead of with it. His footing is off, and he is too unaware—allows you far to close; the blood looks mistaken on his face. Small flecks that dash and fly, it’s brushed off carelessly with the fabric of his coat.

You settle just outside their ring of light, nestled in the low branches of a strong tree, sword across your lap and weight settled on the balls of your feet—ready to wrest yourself from the branches. They are strange creatures because they seem almost unsteady on the ground, as if tripping through the stars was so much easier—they wobble like babes, their fingers linger against the rough bark of trees. They touch things as if they could still not believe that it truly existed—that they stepped between green leaves, and red burnished barks.

You watch them spin and cheer, tangling fingers and throwing their bodies through the haloes of light and dipping fearlessly into the dark between blinks. They do not have that honed itch in their muscle that would keep them alive for long—they dig into this little corner of this world that did not belong to them. Like a sense that you’ve developed over the season, you can sense your warriors circling—giving wide berth, but dashing through their barrowed borders to fill the demand you had given them for intelligence. The information would go to Indra, it would be filtered through your trikru chieftain—no one knew you’d left the borders of Polis, only Gustus knew you’d fallen into the dark astride Tricova. He’d tried to stop you—but it had been summers since he’d been able to do that.

You sidestep your own scouts, slipping between their routes to keep your eyes on these invaders—watching their movements as well as their words. You settle yourself to being the observer, the consummate hunter—watching their ritual with eager interest. They offer up shackled wrists, bracelets of silver encircling their arm—it seemed a right of some kind, cutting through the restraint and spilling back into the revelry around them.

They seem harmlessly inept, hardly anything worth your time if they hadn’t fallen in the middle of your war, but any mercy you’d thought to offer them. The nomadic desert, the lands beyond the bone canyon—they spiral quickly and completely out of control. There is no order, no sense—nothing that could redeem them, nothing that would make you believe they are anything more than a blight. Knowing that the forst is thick with your warriors, they fight amongst themselves—they claw and snarl and wrestle. They bloody their own knuckles with little to no prompting.

You don’t know how you missed her—between making sure your own warriors didn’t know you were there, and giving these loud invaders the slip—she steps between branches like sunlight and blue skies. She watches the forest with the knowledge that there are eyes looking back, even if she does not know—you are positive she feels your gaze, for she lingers on the tree you’ve nestled yourself. Her lips pinch with scorn, and her eyebrows hike low with a furtive knowledge, a burdened intelligence. You don’t know what holds her attention—her and the dark haired boy from the wood—a curiosity tightens in your stomach, and you drop to the ground to steal closer.

Something about her darkens like storm clouds, gathering and darkening the blue of her, a shadow passing through a spring afternoon. It isn’t until you’re practically on top of them that you see the boy who’d been swallowed by the acid fog—his skin distended and blemished, his eyes sightless and foggy. You’re all too familiar with the gargling choke of someone drowning in their own lungs—it would take him hours to die, sucking in ounces of air between hot putrid blood and thick viscous puss. Death is the heaviest of weights to carry—a boulder begging to drag you to the ground, if you will only let it. You see the uncertainty flood their expressions, the fear and sadness. They are truly afraid—because this is not a boy still alive but screaming, this was not bodies lost to the woods. This was the difference between dead—and dying.

You’d still been a child when you’d realized how fundamental the difference was—to watch the life flicker like shadows out of someone’s eyes. To watch the foggy glaze milk the color from their eyes.

But then she reminds you of Daxon—the grimace that could be mistaken for a smile that tips her lips and draws longing from even your stone chest—a healer comforting a boy already dead, soothing his spirit so that it may settle quietly into whatever comes next. Do these children believe in stardust and eternity? The slow, melancholy humming pulls at you, draws you through the green, until you had almost joined them.

You wanted to know their character, you wanted to know if their brittle sky bones could survive the crash, but not your ground—and you had learned enough to know they must be expunged from your land. They must be finished and removed—but this girl, this princess—this _Klark_. You wish she had been from anywhere other than the sky—you could abide by the rivers and the great water, by the island and the deserts, even the mountains and plains. But your dominion did not extend to the stars—it never would, your concern involved everything that happened on your ground.

“Okay,” her voice a whisper, and you strain to hear her clearly, “I’m going to help you. Alright?” You want to tell her to save her soul the weight, that she too will be dead soon, but you refrain. You are the consummate observer, you are not here to interfere—it is below the commander to involve herself. This sky princess, this _Klark_ , knows already the price of solid ground and fresh air—the price is knowing when the fight is over, when the end is absolute.

“ _Yu gonplei ste odon_ ,” you don’t know if you are saying it for the boy set dead in the brush—a dagger biting softly into his throat, or this girl you’ve already marked for death. These angry children must die, so that you may win your war—necessary casualties, ones you refuse to burden yourself with. They will not be marks upon your back, they will not be stones in your soul—it was simple misfortune that they’d fallen in the middle of a war you could no dissuade yourself from.


	9. ask a man to dig his grave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What do you want?” He says it wearily, all the air leaving his lungs in a hiss, the mask of his suit getting foggy with his warm breath. 
> 
> “Nothing. From you, at least.” No, he can’t give you anything, because he is here. He is on the wrong side of those large metal doors, he is in your world. Not for much longer, but regardless.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IDEK? I've been working like mad, so sorry for the wait! This chapter is without the 100, but it is what Lexa has to do to keep all the pieces where they are needed. Enemies, allies, and everything in between. The 100 really kind of threw a kink into everything when they landed. And they didn't help anything by not dying real quick and saving her the trouble of having to deal with them. As usual, my poor grammar and such is all my own, I'll read through this when I get home from work to see just how many mistakes I made. 8)

It is impossible to truly know differences until it is set out in the light for all to see. You can be told about the lines drawn in the sand a thousand times, but until you actually set foot on the beach—feel the granules between your toes, and the salt on your tongue—it is abstract. Something without definition, without substance. Just another set of words strung together in the hope that in the end it will hold water—it will remain true. You’ve heard a thousand and one things about the people under the mountain—you’ve heard that they drink wine out of the skulls of infants, that they bath in blood and sleep in basinets of bone. You don’t believe most of the things you hear, but you do remember them, because you know better than most what can start a story—the small pieces of truth that begin every lie.

You knew well enough the lies that exist about you—legends that had been gathering momentum for the better part of your life. Stories that were whispered around fires in the dead of night, half-truths that become more, and more, farfetched the longer they existed. One of these known truths is as such—you are immortal. In a way no commander before you has managed—while their spirit lived on to spill into you, you have tethered it solidly to your body—a warrior will swear this, with ten more to swear next. That they had seen a sword punch through your heart and press out your back—and you’d only laughed, had thrust your own blade into your attackers throat and pulled his blade free from your body.

You know when your warriors have been telling this particular tale because they quiet when you near—they watch you with deference and a sprinkle of something uncertain—fear, or just human caution. Because as you had been to children your own age once upon a time, you are now this to whole armies—you are _other_. You know the attack they have exacerbated—a bandit had thrown himself from the trees and taken you off your horse, his short sword already halfway through your shoulder before you’d sheathed your own blade inside his stomach. You’d laughed—the sharp barking laughter of someone who didn’t know how to cry or scream. You’d curled around the wound as you’d pulled the short sword free, tossing it aside—but your chest was already soaked in red, the slash in the fabric settling in such a way that it was mostly centered on your chest.

You’d become immortal, simply by taking a dagger to the meat of your shoulder. You don’t believe even you would be able to dissuade them of the notion if given the chance—it was too engrained into the morale of your armies. They howled, and chanted, and roared with the knowledge that their immortal, ruthless commander howled with them. So it is with this knowledge that you sit before this man of the mountain and really look at him. His hair is going gray at his temples, his skin creasing at the edges of his blue eyes—he is schooled into the neutrality of a soldier. His lips pressed tightly together, his jaw clenched, and his hands set motionlessly in his lap—he’s been disarmed, unlike all the other _refels_ your warriors had tossed into a pile, his _refel_ sat between you, and he, on the ground. Polished, and silent, and deadly.

“I’ve never spoken to a mountain man before,” your posture is poor, slanting back against the rough bark of a tree, intentionally dismissive. “I’ve killed many of you, but never spoken to one.” There had never been much chance; the shattering weapons these hermits have could slaughter a whole _gonakru_ in seconds if they weren’t careful—if they weren’t vigilant and quick. You had taken four of your _jusbrotas_ and stalked around to the dark side of the mountain—a messenger had come from the _lekgedakru_ —the people of the lakes—that a village had been taken.

It was an outpost, for wounded warriors and healers, for those who weren’t yet ready to travel the distance to the _lekkru_ capitol—the reapers had set down upon it and left no one behind, or alive. When you’d arrived three mornings past, there had been bodies scattered across the ground—those warriors who had tried to fight despite their injuries. They’d used sticks and rock, dull blades and brittle chains. The pyre was set, and after you had burned the dead—you had decided to go hunting. The _maunon_ were loud and careless, thinking nothing of the land below their feet, or on the other side of their plastic masks.

“I have nothing to say to savages.” His voice is distorted, like he is both far away, and too close—his features pinch and his eyes watch your _jusbrotas_ milling behind you in the cover of the trees. He is afraid, it is in the bead of sweat rolling down the side of his nose, the white exposed by his too wide eyes, the way his fingers flexed spasmodically into fists. He looked startled that you speak his language, brows tucking like he hadn’t expected this turn—and that is one of the differences there. You must know your prey inside and out—what drives them, what will make them go to ground, what they cherish, and need, or better yet— _want._

“You will cooperate,” it’s blithe, as if he was a child that simply couldn’t understand what the adults spoke of. “You need time, and I’m in the position to offer that. Being uncooperative will be a very sudden end.” Ask a dull man to dig his own grave, and he’ll refuse—because he has pride, and dignity, and principle. That man will die on the ground for all to see, for the carrion birds to pick apart.

Now, ask a smart man to dig his grave, and he’ll do it without question—he’ll pick a shovel and get to work, because every moment he lives—is a moment something could change. These situations are fickle things, they could turn as easily as the wind. These civilized moles think themselves above your people—that because they hide away behind plastic, and carry guns, that they have somehow enslaved human nature. That they were not subject to whim and instinct—you intend to show him otherwise.

“What do you want?” He says it wearily, all the air leaving his lungs in a hiss, the mask of his suit getting foggy with his warm breath.

“Nothing. From you, at least.” No, he can’t give you anything, because he is here. He is on the wrong side of those large metal doors, he is in your world. Not for much longer, but regardless. “Before I was commander, did you know I was a merchant? Not a warrior, or a healer—no, I sold things.” His eyes are sharp, glinting, absorbing this information and you know now that they have only started watching you recently—perhaps when the coalition began. When warriors flocked to sit just beyond their acid fog.

“Things people didn’t need, or even particularly want—until I told them just how much they did.” You pause, hand flicking through the air to further make your point. “I made them believe exactly what I wanted; because belief is more important than _want_ or _need_.” You had learned this from a man who had believed in nothing—except maybe himself. Your father had used belief like many warriors did swords or spears; his words were sharp as any dagger.

“So you’re a con-artist.” You imagine he means to hurt you, or unbalance you, but he can say nothing that you haven’t already thought of yourself. Even if you don’t understand this particular slur.

“A _conartist_?” Chin tipped inquisitively, but you think better of it a moment later; waving your hand through the air again, as if brushing away the unimportant comment.

“My people fear the mountain because they believe so many things about you—ridiculous things.” Stories told from grandmother’s to young children, from warriors to their seconds—little bobbles of half-truth to illustrate things they really knew nothing about. This man in his plastic suit is hardly the demon many believe him to be—he is a man, as any other, who is so weak that air alone would kill him. What was supposed to give life, would steal his in moments.

“Take this for example.” Stepping toward him, you relish the instinctual flinch backwards he can’t suppress—you get close enough to crouch beside his lost rifle. “I’ve been told touching this will steal my spirit, will rot my skin from the inside out. My warriors refuse to touch these; leaving them instead to litter my forests.” When you’d been younger, you’d been afraid too—the bitter center of you cold and slick with fear of what might happen if so much as a finger grazed the matted black of these guns.

Reaching out, your hand hovers over the grip, keeping your eyes set on the widening blues behind that face shield. When your fingers curl and heft the weapon upward—it’s lighter than you thought it would be, maybe because he’d shot off so many of his bullets in the panic of being herded. You settling it between your palms, appreciating the warmth of the metal, the heft of the weapon. Your spirit remembers guns like these—tossing bullets into people that would ping around inside, ruining everything that was a person. Carve them out and spill their meat back onto the ground.

“What’s your point?” He’s angry, he’s afraid—and rightfully he should be, because you were not the savage he was expecting. He wanted a brute splashed in blood, foaming at the mouth for carnage, babbling incoherently—something to justify his own beliefs. Your father called you a body seer, you were his best weapon when settling in a new town—you always knew what someone wanted.

“My point,” you had planned to kill him, to crack him open and leave his splayed body out before their mighty metal doors—a warning, a threat. Something to make them fear your ground with its toxic air—but they already think you thoughtless barbarians. Violence would only reassert something they already knew—something that they moved past with their veils of civility and assumptions of unparalleled intelligence.

“My point is that I see you,” you want this man to know the green of your eyes, the knowing way your finger rests on the trigger of his stolen rifle—they have their fortress, their guns, their missiles. “And now, you see me, _maunon_.” As you stand, his eyes linger on your own—his face crippled with uncertainty—especially when you heft the rifle with you. He still thinks he is going to die, he still fears death because he’d never thought he’d greet the end so soon. Your _jusbrotas_ slip from the thick foliage, all blood spatters and war paint—towering muscle and snarling jungle cat teeth.

Turning on your heel, you walk away—you can still hear the artificial wheeze of the mole’s suit, hear the stumbling thrash of ungainly limbs as he sprinted through the underbrush—trying to escape. Let him. The mountain had been devouring your people’s blood for generations—it was bedding down in soiled linen and bleached bone.

Let them fear something other than air.

* * *

With the blood washed from your face, only hints of red left at the edge of your jaw, and in the creases of your palms—you wonder who you are. You are carved off pieces of those around you, hints of their morals and goals, their strengths—and yes, some of their weaknesses. You try to remember who you had been before you became commander—or even earlier than that, before you left your village to travel the roads with your father. You’d been graceless and without guile; a foolish girl who had blundered through the heavy snow of winter with the immortality of youth snug across your shoulders.

If you could sit that small, brash, and fearless girl down and tell her everything that would befall her—would you? Could you crack open her lion’s heart, and tell her that the world was a horrible place, that death would be her only constant companion, and that when she shattered—she’d never be the same. That she had to learn how to adapt to all those things she was missing—all the things she’d deliberately tossed away. Could you tell her that at night, she’d lay awake and wonder if there would ever be a time when she’d run out of slivers of her soul to sell? That she’d stare up into the black, and realize she’d given everything away—there was nothing left to her but obligation, and tight chested loyalty.

“This is dangerous, _heda._ ” You’d wondered when Gustus would be unable to hold his tongue any longer—your massive protector had lingered just behind your shoulder more readily than he had since you were a child. His eyes following every flicker of shadow against the drawn canvas of your tent. Unlike you, he hadn’t begun removing layers of fabric and fur, the cold metal of weapons and armor. Your hands splay across the war table before you—it wasn’t ideal, this timing, but you couldn’t push it off any longer. Especially not with word of how poorly your generals were dealing with the sky children.

The ice nation’s annual festival was set to begin at midnight—the first such festival in nearly two generations. It asked the commander to condemn the snows of winter, to corral the blizzards and curb the need for the cold to snatch strong infants from their mother’s arms. They only asked commanders with the north in their blood, with ice in their bones—they had refused at first, turned their nose away and spat into the snow. They said you were of the wood, green as spring and warm blooded as a _bulwinken_.

“Stop worrying, Gustus.” He takes the chide with merely a huff, his frame surprisingly graceful as he rounds the table to stand before you—the wooden bowl in his hand filled with the pale gray paste that the _azgeda_ use to mark their warriors. It is cool, unlike your own kohl, but it feels familiar. You’d played with it as a child, found a canister squirrelled away in the tavern when you’d been sent on an errand. You’d been fascinated with the warriors seeking rest in your village—hulking northern men and women, scarred and smeared with pale gray paint.

There are things about you that only Gustus knows—and maybe your _jusbrotas_ —because you know that he would choose you. Over himself, over your people, over the world—something about you had woken a feral protectiveness that was unparalleled. You know you can trust Anya to act in your people’s best interest, you know you can trust Indra to follow orders—even the ones that seem questionable. Thousands would slaughter if only you asked it of them, but Gustus was different. He always would be.

“All my people must see me as theirs.” The coalition was holding, but there was always a tilted sense of favoritism—you sit in Polis as your capitol, you bring warriors from the woods clan with you over territory lines and into battle. Now, with the sky falling down into the wood, you must make sure your presence if known to all—that they breathe you in and let you sit in their chest for guidance. “The north bucks still, and they cannot if we wish to win the day.” If they cannot fear you like they should, they will love you—they must be unable to see you as anything other than one of them.

“ _Heda_ , this is too risky.” You look small next to him, stripped down to a pale colored shirt with no sleeves, and pants ripped to ribbons that wrapped tightly around your thighs—without your armor, and your weapons, you are once again that slight girl who’d been called little sparrow. “They hope for your death.” But despite his caution, he doesn’t hesitate when you close your eyes—his thumb tracing the curve of your brow and the slant of your cheeks. The gray paste is cold, but it traces of smoothly, making your features stick slightly with each expression. Instead of your usual pattern, it is two lines traced down your cheeks, tucking up under your jaw, and down your neck on either side of your windpipe.

“Then they will be disappointed,” you know he’s finished because while he hasn’t stepped back, he has let his arm fall to his side unmoving. “Haven’t you heard, _Gostos_. I am immortal.” Opening your eyes, you know he sees you for what you are truly—one of northern blood, born _azgeda_ despite everything your generals have convinced themselves of otherwise over the seasons. You know if you ask him, he will take your place—he will remove his armor, and his weapons, and step into the blood circle in the center of the _azgeda_ capitol.

“I worry for the coalition,” he says, his face half lost into the thick twists of his beard, his right hand slightly extended—his fingers covered in white clay. He wants to protect you, even after everything he has seen you do—he’d seen the weight that had been added to you when you’d been baptized in the blood of a thousand winter soldiers. He wants to save you, because he still thinks there are pieces left that haven’t been soaked in blood, or shattered in battle—you see it in the soft edges of his eyes, the hope that when everything is done, you will somehow manage to be a person, and not a martyr.

“You worry for me.” Reaching up, you clasp his cheeks, his rough beard coarse against your palms—he is still, and you know if you ask him for his dagger, so that you may plunge it through his heart. He would simply give it to you—because Gustus loves you, and even if the world burned to ashes beneath his feet, if you lived—it would be a good day. You know he thinks about the expiration that hangs above your head—no commander has lived past twenty-five summers—that he is biding his time until you can claim twenty-six and break the fear free from his heart. You can’t, because while so many think you immortal—you know you are dying. A little more every day, with every won gamble and lost bet—you are fighting wars on too many fronts, and while you wish to win them without blood, you have condemned yourself to crimson cloaks.

Anya had loved you before you had even been born—she’d loved a man who had been brave, and dangerous, and hopeful. Who had inspired love, because he had been made by battle, and forged in care—he believed in the impossible up until his very death. Pieces of that man linger in you, and while Anya had stopped looking for him, you know she sees the glimpses that emerge despite yourself. She loved you, and protected you, and keep so much to herself, because she could remember losing you—of the cold blood on her hands, and the mangled hang of your unhinged jaw. She remembered your death, had lived through it so that she may find you again—may make you stronger, willing to do the things your pride, dignity, and will, hadn’t allowed that first time.

If you died today—Anya would search your next self for pieces of you as she had that dead man so long ago. She would comb through the spirit, and pick out little mannerisms that she knew—that she loved. She would survive you again, so that she may make sure you live in your next life.

Gustus—you don’t think Gustus would survive your death. He loves you recklessly and selfishly, he would burn your coalition to the ground, if you would survive the flames. You know you remind him of a daughter he’d lost long before—a girl who had been the reason he left Polis to fight on the front lines. Who he saw in the slant of your cheek, and the purse of your lips. Anya had known what she was doing when she sent you to him all those summers ago—she knew you would find a stalwart protector in the general on the front.

“ _Nou get yu daun, Gostos_.” Leaning forward, and up, you press your forehead against his—you cannot promise him anything, that you won’t die, or that you are incapable of it—you can only ask him not to worry. You don’t say that he will most likely out live you, that he is fearing something that is in so many ways inevitable—you are expiring, and while that no longer scares you, it sits heavily on those who fight to keep you with them. Who linger near you, despite the curse of death you seem to embody.

* * *

Detri—the  _azgeda_ capitol—is colder than most other places in the territory, even at the end of summer. It was set back into the mountains, beyond peaks and slopes, behind brittle ledges of ice and snow. You walked past their gates with only four guards—a venture that many of your advisers had been against, had decried as lunacy—but you knew these people. You knew them long before they knew of you, and it had been clear at the time of that decision that if they wished you dead—it would be something they could pull around their shoulders. Something that they could spin stories of, that they could spit back at the leadership of the wood.

_Jaulai_  is a very traditional festival, asking for the gods of winter to settle back into sleep for the remaining season. To save their mountain pass villages from avalanches and the cold black of winter. The last winter had been one that had reached even the southern islands—chips of ice snaking across normally warm weathers. So they ask this of you—ask you for your blessings. To grace them with a smooth season, for health and vitality. They ask you to be what you said you are— _ah won kru_. To be _azgeda_  in the same way you are _whetkru_ and _trikru_.

That is how you find yourself here. Ankle deep in show drift, bare save the loose white fabric, and golden bands bracketing your arms—and the thick rope wrapped around either wrist. It chafes and hinders much of your motion, but you’d looped the extra rope twice more to that it didn’t drag on the ground. You are within the crimson painted circle, a barrier between you and freedom—stepping beyond that line was a disgrace, it would shadow you in shame, and permit your quick end. _Heda_ or not, the traditions of the north are harsh and unforgiving.

Hunters, a large _gonakru_ , had caught a _lepah_ in the highest peaks of the mountains—a large feral cat waiting patiently for you across the circle. Its thick white and gray tail coiled and twitching, its ice blue eyes set on you. You had to stay in this _jusroun_ —blood circle—for the length of a legend. That of the first commander, who had wrestled the burning skies below the ground, and the frozen wastes up into the clouds—who fought, and fought, and did not ask. He had told them to remain, that if they stepped foot beyond their domain again—he would slaughter whole seasons with his bare hands. Tear the clouds in two, and smother the fires with dust.

Not only could you not leave the _jusroun_ , you could not let the beast leave either—you could not let it be called by the children chanting up in windows, or the warriors waiting for you to fail. You had to keep it more concerned with you, than the easy meals just outside that thin line of red.

When the bone man began speaking, the net that had been weighing the beast down was pulled back harshly, and you sprang forward—whatever intent the feline had to spring away was dashed by your advance. Fight or flight—it was hungry, and you were small. It picked fight. Your blood ran hot through your veins as you dipped away from a wide set paw—each pad ended in a vicious curling claw. It was easily thrice your size, one of the largest you’d ever seen. As you rolled away from another swipe, you could hear the rhythmic drawl of the story—you could remember some of it from your childhood.

It was a long story.

You know why Gustus had said this was foolish—why he thought this would kill you—no warrior had been able to survive. Either dying in the confined space, refusing to disgrace themselves in death—or the beast had sprung away and slaughtered untold amounts of people. Either of those would end your coalition—would remove your already shaky grasp on the north, and plummet your people back into civil war. With these sky children shaking the ground, you had to tighten your grasp on your pieces—on the enemies turned allies that had always hoped for your misstep.

In the same way you had reigned in the _azgeda_ instead of razing their territory to the ground, it was a risk that you took on readily—you had to be brash and fearless. The bone man had just gotten to the sky burning when the large cat caught you at the shoulder with half a paw of claws. The strike spinning you wide and felling you to one knee. Red seeped through the light color of your minimal clothing—glinting harshly off the golden bands wrapped around your biceps. You can only watch one, or maybe two, droplets hit the ground before the _lepah_ is on you again. Rolling through the snow gracelessly, you rotate up onto your feet and spin just in time to duck below another paw. The story had only just begun, and you were already bleeding. Looking through the cold air of your breath, you see the cat coiled across from you—claw tipped red, the snow upturned and stained as well.

The warriors have started a low chant— _jus, jus, jus_ —calling for your blood, or that of this monster. The fabric over your right shoulder are torn, the strips falling away to show inked and torn skin—it could be much worse, and you know you would live through this wound every time. But the scent of blood is in the air, and this beats intends to collect. When to springs close enough, you try to get any type of hold on its fur, to hoist yourself onto its back—but it is lean and firm, there is no give to clutch to. Another rake of claws across your stomach, deeper this time, laying you one on the ground turning red in your blood—the bone man has gotten to the endless snow.

A very long story.

When the _lepah_ thrusts its head downward to catch your head between its teeth, you leverage a foot into its throat, and both hands against its muzzle. Pushing away, just as it pushed down. It would win given an extra moment, but with a thrust of your bare feet into its windpipe, it retreats enough to cough and hack—obviously it isn’t used to its meals fighting back. You are soaked now—in snow melted by the heat of your skin—your once white clothing red with your blood. The white paste across your cheeks can’t hide the crimson that soaks you—if anything it brightens it.

The cat tries a few more times to fell you, and when it seems to hedge its bets—it tries to leave. T sprint into the crowd and try its luck there. You don’t let it get two large steps before you are throwing your miniscule weight into its unprotected side. Its light colored fur is strained red, but you have yet to open a single wound—your nails are blunt, and your teeth dull. It is decorated in your blood. Standing readily on two feet, you sway—trying to find something in the ice blues of this beast. This animal trapped, cornered until it had lashed out. You could understand that more than any story about battle season—you are a beast, too. Cornered by circumstance, bucking people off your sides until they shattered against the ground.

You felt more kinship with this _lepah_ than you did most. Stalking in tight circles, but getting nowhere—you can see the hunch of muscle before it lunges. No warrior has been able to live through the batting claws and snarling teeth of a beast—they have not have the foolish bravery to throw their body between a charging monster, and their people. With your vision hazy with blood loss, with your skin numb from the cold, you drop the extra length of rope from around your wrists and when the best gets close enough, you catch its massive head in the slack of rope.

The momentum tears your feet from the ground, but you’re able to clamber into place on the cat’s back. It trashes and throws its weight around for the longest few moments of your life—but when you tighten the rope, catching the rough material in your numb hands and pulling, it stutter and coughs. Hacking as it continues to struggle. You can’t feel the blood cracking through your chilled palms, the scratching along your legs from where a careless claw had unintentionally caught you. You keep pulling with whatever strength is left in your body. Until there is no more movement, just a silent length of fur between your thighs, and a hush to those gathered.

Falling from the back of your downed opponent— _yu gonplei ste odon_ —you slid your rope free and stand beside the dead _lepah._ Within the _jusroun_ is upturned red snow, ruined and soiled and scented of metal—outside is perfect white, still and quiet—except the drawl of the bone man, telling of how the first commander began his battle against the seasons. His voice is the only one, the chant for blood has stopped, and you sway stoically in the center of your ring.

Such a long story.

You allow your gaze to drift over those gathered, let them feel the weight of your eyes—you have bled for them. Not for the coalition, not for the _trikru_. You have spilt your northern blood to quench the thirst of their winter. When the bone man has finished, and there is still silence, you uncoiled the rope from your raw wrists—you drop it to the ground and step through the blood soaked with your blood.

“ _Teik ai jus_ ,” take my blood—your voice is rough, a rumble from the back of your throat, and the bottom of your chest. Your toes hit the edge of your _jusroun_ , but you don’t step over just yet. “ _Jus don jus_.” Blood has blood. Turning to your right, you see Gustus; in his hands is your armor—the pauldron scuffed from war, the fabric bright and new—Daxon had taken your older one to his grave. Dragging your toes through the edge of the circle, breaking it willfully, you walk toward your protector, turning your back to him when you catch Echo’s gaze from across the way. Her light eyes are hot, her lips pressed together.

When the weight of your armor is settled into place, Gustus’ hands making sure the crimson fabric is drapped properly, you haven’t looked away from her—your numb hands clicking the stap across your chest into place. Silence has always been where you thrived, where you could search for the answers in the twitch of someone’s eyes—or the shift of their weight. These people were waiting, a gathering of animals trying to scent the air for a predator hidden amongst them.

Despite the cold settling into your bones, the sluggish lethargy that drags through you, you burst through the ground—not surprised in the least as they part for you. Climbing the steps to the dias where the bone man had been drawling his legend, you look down on them now. At the faces smeared in pale paste turned toward you.

“ _Yu laik ai kru_!” Like you had bled for the _trikru_ , you bleed for them now. The _gonakru_ gathered erupts into howls of war, and chants for battle. “ _Ai jus ste yun!_ ” They are yours in this moment—maybe not tomorrow, or next season, or any time after now—but for right now they belong wholly to you. And with the change in the ground beneath your feet, you need your grip on them to remain true.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always feel free to follow me on tumblr @ **civilorange**. I accept prompts and question, and just general tomfoolery. 8)


	10. alive, and warm, and here

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “They’re unpredictable, and volatile.” You hiss the words, stepping closer, not caring that she might catch your slight limp—not caring that with your eyes burning green and your face slathered in _azgeda_ war pant you look like those who she hates most—who you really are in your blood. “If they burned a whole village by _accident_ —what do you think they’d do with intent?” They’re flailing, they’re catching whatever edges they can to stay above ground—they’ll be swallowed whole if they stop moving for even a moment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh man, three day weekend, the _best_! So, I'm doing some editing on things. I honestly hadn't expected anyone to read this, so I just kind of threw a title on and moved on; so I changed the title around, and fixed the summary and some of the tags. I'm still pretty new to AO3, so I'm figuring it out as I write. Now that I've hit ten chapters and somewhere around 50.000 words I'm probably going to go through the existing chapters and edit them, and make it seem like I might know how to speak English even slightly. 8) As a side note, I never realized how easy it was to respond to comments; and it makes me so happy!

Everything is coming to an end, you can feel it in your blood, in the ground beneath your feet—even in the darkening sky above. _Trikova_ throws himself through the overgrown paths that had been forgotten over the seasons—ones that you had used when you’d been young, when your father had gone to sleep for the night and he’d left a child in charge of navigation. The guards had been skeptical of your _short cuts_ but they were being paid, and in the long run it hadn’t mattered. There had never been bandits on these roads because there was never enough commerce to justify sitting in wait for caravans. You used to take these roads for the thrill, for the adventure—they were the unknown, they were uncertainty to be overcome.

Now, you use them for the silence. For the scream of wind pushing past your ears and the warm movement of your stallion beneath you. It is a brutal pace that puts too much strain on the injuries you let others think didn’t hinder you. The gashes at your shoulder, the bisection of your stomach—the brutal gouge on your calf that has soaked your pant leg through with blood. The red settles in your boots, but you don’t care about that—your attention is on the torches in the distance. You thought you’d moved beyond this, you thought you’d stepped out of the place you’d been where your blood boiled, and your muscles _ached_ for the spill of blood.

You’d been on your way back to the battlefront from _Azgeda_ when a messenger had intercepted you; they’d been harsh of breath and tired at the eyes. This warrior was Tristan’s second, a bright eyed boy who had once ripped out a bandit’s throat with his teeth alone—it hadn’t been as deadly as he’d expected, but it was the kind of brutality that your general appreciates. You think him too unpredictable, too keen of pleasing others—he has no morality of his own to speak of. No sense of self. He had much to say—of bridges and meetings, of gunfire and wounds. His words had wrapped your heart in fear for the first time in recent memory; it tugged, and tugged, and tugged, until you were changing direction and heading into the black of night.

When your mount breaks through the brush at the edge of the outpost, they aren’t expecting you—their spears twitch upward, ready to be driven through _Trikova_ ’s breastplate. These men are fast, but your _jusbrotas_ are faster; snares are snapped out to howl through the air, Wrapping around ankles and bringing muscle heavy bodies to the ground. It is the moment they need to recognize your guard—your hood is pulled low, no hint of crimson fabric or golden trinkets. You are awash in dark fabric, and dull metal armor—only those familiar with you will recognize your weapons. These men see tongueless warriors with jungle cat teeth, with paint crimson as blood and eyes quiet as stone—they don’t struggle; they know the commander’s guard on sight.

It isn’t hard to find Anya; you just follow the cursing. The healer’s tent is at the center of the camp, torches at every corner to allow for as much light as possible. Throwing back the entrance you’re treated to the sight of your mentor stripped to the waist, her shoulder red with blood—it looks like the bullet had just grazed her, through and through. There is a young girl standing off to the side, her eyes wider than they should be, her hands occupied with a bowl of bloody rags. “ _Pleni_.” Your voice breaks through the harsh curses—calm and quiet, despite you feeling neither of those things.

Anya settles her gray-blue eyes on you and waits, her lips pressed together, and her jaw clenched. She is the only one who can recognize you from voice alone, the healer, and the girl both flinch away when you remove your hood. You think it is because they recognize you, that it is deference that has them move away—until you remember the pale paste still slathered across your eyes and down your cheeks, the blood still staining your skin. You hadn’t the time to properly wash—you planned on cleaning up when you reached your battle camp. This diversion was unexpected. These two see an _azgeda_ warrior splattered in blood—they seen enemy, even if you had removed that distinction—the tribes had been at war for far too long to remove ingrained reactions.

“ _Heda_.” She says your title as she slips from the bench she’d been on, her bloody fist hitting her wounded chest a little too hard—you can’t help the pinch of your brow, or the tightening of your lips. You can see the twitch in her cheek that says she has something to say—something she wouldn’t dare say in front of others. Despite everything, you feel the pressure in your chest loosen, because she is not dying—she is alive, and angry, and you are fine with that.

You have so much you want to say, so much that sits heavily inside. _Thank gods_ , and _you’re alright_ , and _I missed you_. “Your guard is weak,” you say instead, because you are the commander and you can’t say anything else. “It only took two of my _jusbrotas_ to down them.” Your blood warriors are feared—and respected—for their skill. Anya has always has a bitter taste in her mouth when it came to them; her mentor, the last commander, had bled to death before his blood warriors had found him. They’d found his second crippled with rage and sadness, and they hadn’t known what to do. She doesn’t trust them with your life, she never has, but she accepts that they are the only viable alternative to herself.

“ _Bants_.” It only takes a single word for both the healer and the girl to leave; but it isn’t until the girl looks back at Anya for confirmation that you understand her to be Anya’s second. You are the commander of the twelve clans, you’ve erased borders that had existed for this girl’s whole life—but Anya is her mentor, so she questions you. You’re glad that she has found someone to fill those places inside that she pretends doesn’t exist. Places where you had been, once upon a time. It only takes the slightest shift of a blonde head before you are alone—the candlelight flickering against the sides of the tent, the quiet of the camp oppressive.

Now that she is before you, alive and mostly unharmed, you can breathe easier—you can slow the hard beat of your heart and settle the straining of your muscles. You are reminded of your injuries now that your adrenaline has past—the blood soaking through your dark clothing almost impossible to see, but if you give Anya the chance to notice, she won’t let it past.

“ _Heda_.” She calls for your attention, your brow tucking as you focus on her again—she’s scrutinizing you, like she always did when she knew you weren’t being truthful. She had never worried about calling you out when she’d been your mentor, cuffing your ear for good measure—but you aren’t that child anymore. You are grown, taller than her now, all the roundness of youth had left you seasons ago. “What brings you so far from Polis?” She watches you, her voice settled, like she hadn’t anything to tell you—like the sky children hadn’t almost taken her from you.

Because beyond invasions and burned villages, that is their true crime—they dare try to take this woman from you. They thought so much of themselves that they would think it was within their right to kill indiscriminately—you could forgive them a lost village, you could forgive them a foolish war, you could forgive them unsettling everything you’d planned. But if you had entered this camp, and had not found Anya alive—there would have been nothing that could aid them. Not their missiles, or their guns. You feel the pressure of your teeth as they grind together, the ache behind your eyes that may have at one point produced tears—but you are beyond that now. You’re angry, and you’re reckless—you’re the very demon who had broken into the north and slaughtered a dynasty. Who killed, and ruined, and inspired fear and reverence—you would kill these children yourself.

“Lexa.” She says your name now—the slightest edge of concern to her tone. She sees the shadows in your eyes, the wan tint to your skin, and the slight lean of your posture away from your wounded leg. “Why’re you here?” She isn’t asking as your general, she doesn’t want to know why the commander would go half a day’s ride out of the way—she wants to know why _you_ are here.

You refuse to answer, your jaw locked and your posture aggressive—she knows why you’re here. It is in the way she exhales suddenly and looks away—like you’ve disappointed her. And that hurts worse than any injury—worse than the claws that had opened your shoulder, or strain of pushing yourself to the edge. She expects more from you, she wants you to do everything she’d been incapable of—uniting the clans, conquering the mountain. She’s always known you were human—that you feel everything so keenly it is crippling—but you’ve never shown her the truth of it. Knowing, and seeing, are so different. You’ve grit your teeth and pulled command around you like armor—you’d been the commander, even when she’d called you _Lexa._

“They could’ve killed you.” It isn’t what you mean to say, and you realize it has slipped out when her eyes widen and she leans back against the bench she’d been sitting on before you entered. “That was foolish, and reckless, and—you could’ve been killed.” You can’t stop the way you blink rapidly—the way your jaw clenches and you’re forced to look up—right at the torch in the corner of the room. The bright light removed the burn in your eyes and allows you to look at her again.

She says, “They’re children,” like that changes anything, like that _matters_.

“And how many had I killed when I was a _child_?” Dozens, hundreds, _thousands_.

“You’re different.” She has the nerve to sound dismissive—to shrug through your point to rub at the shoulder that had her wound on it. “They’re still in the sky, they don’t know how to live here.” Bandages are tight around it, and you know she’ll be fine tomorrow. That this was just another wound in war—but you’d been able to be at her side during other battles. You’d been able to make sure she didn’t catch an errant spear, or a careless arrow—you’d been _there_. But now you are needed elsewhere; you are needed at the foot of the mountain—and in the south islands, and everywhere, but where you want to be.

“They’re unpredictable, and volatile.” You hiss the words, stepping closer, not caring that she might catch your slight limp—not caring that with your eyes burning green and your face slathered in _azgeda_ war pant you look like those who she hates most—who you really are in your blood. “If they burned a whole village by _accident_ —what do you think they’d do with intent?” They’re flailing, they’re catching whatever edges they can to stay above ground—they’ll be swallowed whole if they stop moving for even a moment.

“The girl wanted an alliance.” _The girl_. You don’t need to ask to know who she’s speaking of—hair golden like the stars, and eyes blue as the skies.

“You were foolish to consider it.” You’re angry again—this time at Anya for being so reckless. You wonder if this is how she’d felt while raising you to be a warrior; when you’d been a foolish dreamer. A _raun sheidgeda_. “They don’t know how to have peace within themselves, how’re they to have it with us?” You’d watched them snap and turn on each other—flitting through leaders whenever they didn’t like how one responded. You can’t trust that disregard for order—that lack of logical response.

“Why’re you here, Lexa?” She asks you slowly, looking at you— _really_ looking at you, and you can only swallow. Can only hold the pride in your shoulders for so long before you realize there is nothing you can say—nothing that you can say that will change anything. You see the grit of her teeth, the tilt of her chin, and you know that she will only leave if you order her to. There is no request that will remove her—no plea that can put her back behind Polis’ walls.

You can’t protect her.

“I don’t know.” Is all you have left; you will swear the guards to silence, and Anya will keep the healer and her second quiet. You were never here—the commander cannot abandon her war, because someone she...someone she cared about was in peril. War has casualties—you know this better than most.

“I’m not Costia,” she doesn’t need to be a dead girl—she could be any number of others who had ceased to be so suddenly. Who you had sacrificed for this blood soaked dirt beneath your feet. If begging her would have worked, you might’ve—pride is imaginary lines in the dirt that just aren’t worth it.

It was you who had said these sky children must be removed—that they were invaders and murderers. You had set a fire inside your warriors and released them into the woods against an enemy they didn’t understand—the moles are vile creatures, but they are known, they are patterned and predictable. Anya can’t know what these sky people are capable of—because they haven’t had chance to truly show their colors. You see disorder and chaos, violence and mutiny—but what else is there? Are they blood thirsty? Are they liars? Is there a level they won’t sink to?

“You don’t need to be Costia to die,” you’re shutting down, pulling away, you can’t oblige her this foolishness—this prideful stand. But the disappointment still lingering is what stops you from pulling her out of this war—she’ll never look at you the same, she’ll never think you capable of leading, if you’re not able to sacrifice one warrior. Exhaling, you clench your jaw and tip your chin upward—pride, however fabricated, would have to suffice for now. Turning on your heel, you leave her behind—her second lingering just out of the circle of torches, watching you with wide feral eyes.

How many people would die for you?

* * *

You say you’re going to head back to your battle encampment before morning—that you’re just resting, gathering strength for the return ride. You’re unbalanced, and unsure, and you fight your demons quietly while watching—the scouts are further away tonight, obviously on Anya’s orders. You hear them in the far brush every candle or so, their eyes turned toward the sky children’s camp—the noise and the light, the chorus of chaos and thundering oblivion.

You’re leaning back against an uprooted log, your sword has been removed from your waist to rest against your uninjured shoulder—you’re settled far enough away that you cannot make out any words, only noise, and cannot distinguish faces, only see shadows across the trees. Their own guards—boys and girls who handle their rifles with much less efficiency than the people of the mountain—don’t stray too far into the forest; they flirt with the dark, but always quickly retract back into the circle of torch light.

With the whisper of crickets in the forest, and the humid thickness in the air, you close your eyes—you sink into the dark and for a moment you aren’t a junkyard royal. All broken pieces and poorly fitted edges; made of rusted metal and copper toned glass—you can feel them moving inside, shifting and slotting together, trying to fill in all the empty places you’ve had to learn to live around. Places where people had been, where dreams and hopes had existed—you couldn’t have them yourself, you can’t even begin to imagine what you want. But everyone you’d lost had a dream—had something that pushed them forward so that yesterday was nothing in the wake of tomorrow.

What do these sky children want? What do they _dream_ of? Did they close their eyes at night and imagine the stars—in the way you used to when you were young. Of tripping through the constellations, and resting in the clouds. Or if the ground their impossible? Do they wish for treetop shadows and chilling river beds? Endless mountain ranges and the first snow of winter.

The forest is quiet this night, the noise dying slowly, and then suddenly all together—you can hear the crack and snap of leaves and twigs. The brush of a body in motion through branches—these _skaikru_ don’t know how to live on your ground yet. They have more in common with the mountain men than they did your people—with their guns and their _technology_. Their machines could live in the mountain—live in the sky—but the ground had done away with it. Your people had learned their lesson.

“Don’t move.” Unsure—but strong—firm in a way very few were willing to speak to you. You know who it is without opening your eyes—without lifting your chin to peer through the dark of your raised hood. You’d heard her since she’d slipped away from her people—how she had smacked branches out of the way and kicked through the leaves. It had to be obstinacy alone that called her into the wood—the boy with dark hair had been very adamant about no one leaving their encampment.

“Take the hood off.” You comply—taking your time to drag the fabric from where it rested, blinking slowly to regard her—bright hair catch every dash of firelight, her face thrown into shadow, but even now you could make out the blue of her eyes. “Who are you?” She doesn’t have a weapon, and you think that incredibly foolish—she doesn’t step any closer, lingering in the shadow of the night. “What do you want?”

She doesn’t seem to mind that you haven’t spoken yet, and even with your hood down, you know she can barely make out your features from where you’ve tucked away into the dark. Your blade remains untouched against your shoulder, your hands open and loose in your lap. You see the pinch between her pale eyebrows, the purse of her lips—frustration lingering at the edges of her blue eyes.

“I know you speak English.” _Gonasleng_. “Did Anya send you?” Your mentor’s name sharpens your gaze, your lip twitching so minutely—this girl’s idiotic alliance had almost made you lose Anya. Drawing yourself upward, you squint through the light that is cast across your face when you’re at your full height—she swallows, and your head tips to the side.

“No.” You say it slowly, more a sound than a word—more a huff than an answer; Anya would be furious if she knew you were still here, if she knew you were face to face with _Klark_ of the sky people. “You shouldn’t be outside your walls.” You want to eradicate them, you want to remove them, you want to end this—but she is being reckless, and you remember how haunting her humming had been as she’d slid her blade into that boy’s neck. How much like Daxon she’d looked—a healer, a leader.

“If your leader hadn’t double crossed us,” she’s angry, though something about it seems like she’s proven some point—her hands clenching and unclenching. She’s looking at you like you aren’t what she’d expected to haunt the woods—you can imagine the impression you make. Pale paste drawn temple to temple, dried blood on your face and hands, eyes reflective in the light—you wonder if she has nightmares about your people. You don’t want to visit her dreams in that way—not when she looks at you like she’s still contemplating you. You aren’t a sum of your people’s parts—you are not _other_. You are foreign, yes, but there is such consideration in her face.

“My _stelt_ people,” you’re talking slowly on purpose, more north than necessary in your voice, watching how her eyes flicker with each word, how her teeth catch the inside of her lower lip. Thoughtful. “Were shot by your _stelt_ people.” The whole endeavor had been destined for failure; and you want to know when Anya was going to inform you that she was trying to treat with the enemy.

“Your _people_ were going to kill us.” Now she does take a step forward, she steps into your space—she keeps your eyes, and a thrill chases down your spine. She doesn’t look away, if anything her eyes harden. She’s _righteous_ ; and you can only just stop the curl of your lip that could be a smirk—or maybe a smile. You haven’t had reason to smile in so long, you think you’ve forgotten what the telltale signs of one are.

“Were they?” You wouldn’t put it past Anya—she hadn’t been the biggest fan of your coalition, but she had accepted it well enough. “As it stands, only one was wounded by us—one of our own, even if he is a _natrona_.” Lincoln had always been too kind for his own good—his body was built for war, but his heart had never followed—he was rational and calm, when a warrior should be untamed and wild.

The slightest shift of air back in the dark has you drawing her close—she isn’t expecting it, and the sound she makes would have given away your position if you hadn’t clamped a hand over her lips. Pressing her into the bark of a tree, hiding both your silhouettes in the shadow cast by the firelight. Your people ghost through the wood quietly, slipping across tree branches and through the bushes at their base. They would be invisible to these sky invaders, but you’re well acquainted with their sounds—they are shadows passing through the dark, and when they melt into the distance, you can turn your attention to the girl in your grasp.

Her eyes aren’t just blue—they’re _alive_ —curling color and emotion; they’re dark now, cast that way from the night lingering at your shoulders. Unlike your warriors, unlike your chieftains and generals—she holds your gaze. She doesn’t look away, she doesn’t flinch even with you this close—and you know you must look a savage. Her fingers are flexing in the hold you have on her wrists, her jaw working under the fingers you have across her lips.

“You shouldn’t be outside your walls.” You can’t help saying, for want of something to fill the silence—you should move, you should step back and walk away. “The patrol has orders to take any of you found beyond them.” You’re sure she already knows this, you can see it in the tension leaking into her shoulders, into the widening of her eyes. If she hadn’t happened across you—they would have taken her. Anya would have her prize, and you should want that—you should take her yourself, but you don’t move. You just watch her.

She shakes her head just enough to prompt you to remove your hand, a little of the blood that had been leaking down your arm is smudged on her cheek—it looks vicious with her complexion. “Why aren’t you bringing me to Anya?” You don’t like the liberty she takes with your general’s name—she uses it with familiarity and possession. A knowledge of what exactly a name is. You can feel her breath on your cheek, her lips parted slightly and you think to move again—to step back because being this close to an enemy when not killing is foolish.

But you’re locked in place, the scent of wood smoke heavy in your nostrils because it clings to her—they don’t know which trees to burn, so there are smoking themselves out unnecessarily. It is a hefty scent, and with each lungful of air you pull in it lulls you. Your grip on her wrist has loosened slightly, but she hasn’t pulled her hands free. You don’t say anything because there is nothing to be said. There is no reason why you aren’t taking her, why you linger still—why the scent of fire has never smelled so good. She’s light in every way you are dark, she is the exception to the darkness of night—bright where you melt into shadows.

“Go back, before they return.” Now you step away, you put space between you because you spent too much thought on how her pulse drummed against your fingertips, and how her throat bobbed when she swallowed. Her fingers flex and she doesn’t lean away from the tree, jaw set like she has yet another question to fire your way—but she pauses, her fingertips rubbing together and when she looks down you hear the hitch in her breathing.

“You’re bleeding.” She says it with the exhaling astonishment of someone who still couldn’t quiet grasp the concept. Her hands are stained from where you had held them together, enough crimson to be concerning, but you lock your jaw and take another step backward. Toward your blade, away from her. It isn’t until you’ve grabbed your weapon and slotted it back at your waist that you feel the air move—two brash steps through dried leaves and then her fingers tight around your bicep. She isn’t demanding—no, it’s almost…pleading. You turn to see her watching you with a expression at war—and despite being your father’s body seer, and an experience warrior, you don’t know what to make of her conflict of heart.

You’re too pliant, you don’t throw her hand away and sneer—you watch her. Assessing. She swallows, her throat bobbling, and her fingers tighten slightly just as she speaks. “You could’ve turned me over.” Obviously, furrowing your brow while you try to follow her assessment of the obvious—she was without a weapon, and you don’t know exactly what had chased her from her walled in encampment, but it hadn’t been with a plan. “Let me take a look.” You frown, because that was not what you had expected—this sky girl has shaken your expectations too many times.

But she reminds you of Daxon now, earnest and genuine, and you don’t know how to act around people like that—people who still believe in something _good_ or _better_. You can still remember the glint of gold at his shoulder as he steadied you—clutching you at the arm like she is now, keeping you in place. You shake your head slightly, barely a tip from side to side—but she sees it, her lips press together and she looks like she’s about to speak again. But you shake your head once more—a little more clearly, your fingers gently removing her hold from your arm. You keep the tips of her fingers in your hand a moment too long before you step back.

“Go back inside, sky girl.” Some rebellious shard inside howls _stay_ , but it is one impulse amongst many—and it will not win this night. “There’s nothing out here for you tonight.” Whatever had driven her from the relative safety of her people was not worth what waited in the woods—the fate that would befall them all sooner or later. She’s beautiful—you’ve thought about it in so many clinical terms, in observations and assessments. But everything stutters over the simple fact that she’s beautiful—alive, and warm, and _here_.

If she had been from anywhere but the sky, if she had the east in her veins, or the south in her bones. But you don’t know what to make of stardust and constellations—you can’t understand yet what makes her so fundamentally different. You could quantify the other sky children—the smart ones, and the savage ones— _Klark_ ’s second, the boy with the dark hair—a fellow wolf. But this _skai prisa_ , she’s confounding and taxing—and destined for death.

“What’s your name?” She asks; no one asks you that anymore.

You don’t answer, pulling your hood back over the crown of your head and throwing your features back into shadow. She is watching you with an expression you still can’t make heads of—but it turned to surprise and then fear. You can feel the presence of your _jusbrotas_ on either of your sides—with their bright eyes and jungle cat teeth. You’d hoped to slip them for a little longer, but it really was an effort in futility. You don’t like the fear in her eyes—night blue—she is your enemy, and you have committed her to death, but right now you don’t want her fear. You don’t want to be what her nightmares grasp onto when she closes your eyes.

“Goodnight, _Klark._ ” Quietly, but she looks at you with a glint in her eyes—at the use of her name, no doubt—but with a click of your tongue, your blood warriors melt into the dark.

And you aren’t far behind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, feel free to follow me on tumblr @ **civilorange** \- I accept prompts, questions, comments, and general tomfoolery.


	11. everything and nothing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “That’s mine.” Petulant, angry—solid. She isn’t afraid, you don’t think she ever had been—desperate, yes, but never afraid.
> 
> “No, I paid for all this.” You return with something of a smile, because you can see her jaw tense—see her eyes flash. They’re gray—no, blue. Blue-gray. Like the ocean water on a stormy day—deep and all present.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, we're getting toward the main chunk of canon, season two, where everything goes sideways. I still haven't really thought about what I'm going to do with everything, but hopefully something will come to me when I write next. That method has kind of worked for me so far, so why look a gift horse in the mouth? I was thinking of making this into two separate stories; ending this one when we finish with present events, and have the next one begin post season two. Maybe get some order to this mad house of a story. Also, thank you everyone who has reviewed, it means so much to me; and now that I know how easy it is to answer comments, you are going to be punished with my responses. I'm sorry in advance. 8)
> 
> This chapter has a little more of the mysticism of being _heda_ , more so than just guilt fueled crazy. Got to love those hallucinations. Its also a little shorter than usual, but I felt like this could be a stand alone scene.

Arling is a name you still hear occasionally, mostly when in Polis, or in any of the larger villages. You always stop to listen to the story being told—some are ridiculous legends that have gotten more and more egregious as time has passed, but some are so plausible even you start believing—even if it is only for the length of the tale being told. Word weavers gleefully string together tales that keep the children busy—those too young to be trained for battle, or any of the other trade. When you’d been young you’d always gravitated toward the word weavers, lingering for hours until their throats were scratchy and they begged off for the night—in the same way Enrik had keep you enthralled. By all the things that could theoretically happened in places far away—in pieces of the world that you had never laid eyes on. Places that could be horrible, or magnificent—those places were everything, until you could gaze upon them, and realize they were nothing.

Everything, and nothing.

You’d always slipped out of Polis astride _Trikova_ , with your _jusbrotas_ lingering in your shadow because you’d given up trying to slip their attention—they knew to be known, but not seen. Hillsmere was due south of Polis, a large enough port for the boats that didn’t wish to dock at the capitol. For those who wanted calmer affairs; it is also the home village of Arling, their greatest warrior. A man who had been raised by war, bled young in a conflict with _whetkru gonas_ who had slipped through the night and attacked the unsuspecting village. That is the tale they always start with—how an eleven autumn old Arling had gallantly taken up his mother’s cutlasses and downed a whole _gonakru_ without a mark on him. His war chant had been so loud it had woken everyone in Hillsmere up and called them to battle—he’d saved everyone by feeling no fear.

When you’d been young—younger than eleven summers—you couldn’t imagine that type of bravery—to stare death readily in the eyes, and give yourself up to fate. To being the reluctant hero in a story forever more. You know, now, that he had been horribly injured—marred in such a way that he’d lost two fingers and only the best healer in Polis had kept him alive. He hadn’t been alone, but the overwhelming number of _whetkru_ had made it impossible to readily deal with the stack without the aid of the barrack of warriors just out of town. It had actually been the baker’s son who’d burst through the night to alert the _gonakru_ linger just outside the gates.

The weaver always turns to the rebellion of the desert people next—how a young second had been integral to the war effort. How he’d stay alert for days on end to keep watch of a faraway dune—where the _drisankru_ had set up their encampment. He’d blanked through sand storms and blistering days until he’d caught a single reflection from a single blade tip—it had been the turning point in that stalemate. Knowing that the _drisankru_ had shifted out of their dug in positions it had only been a few candles before the _trikru_ had stormed the eastern side of the dune and slaughtered them in their place. The sand had reclaimed many bodies that day.

You had clambered for these stories when you’d been between settlements—in the long nights with only your thoughts for company. Awake because being unaware meant death for a merchant caravan, you’d played them over and over—inserting yourself into the battle, brandishing imaginary swords and slaying imaginary enemies. You’d been a child still, and your brushes with death had been eye opening and hardening, but they’d felt so unnecessary—they hadn’t been for honor, or clan. They had been for greed and materialistic goods—for things, instead of people.

Arling was a hero you wished you could meet—so that your quick eyes might see what exactly made him relished so by the people of the wood. What about him made them love him—what made him a legend, instead of a man.

Whole wars later, you know why. It is the same way you’ve become immortal, in the same way you have summoned falling stars from the sky, in the way you are said to have killed a thousand men in one night. When you sit for the stories now, you’re wrapped in veils, and your weapons are hidden daggers instead of long blades—your armor thick leather instead of glinting metal. You find yourself settled between children too young to work, listening to the stories of a man loved so wholly—at first you would slip away when they turned to tales of your accomplishments. When they children chittered with excitement and leaned forward, devouring the adventures in the same way you had when young. After the fifth time of not hearing about yourself, you catch the weaver’s eye—it is knowing—and you know your layers of dark fabric doesn’t fool her.

She never makes it known, she never gives you name—you are just another tired soul stopping to hear about how amazing life can be.

But she can’t tell you the stories you really want to hear—no, those are too personal. They are the moments between grand wars and strategic mastery. They happen behind closed doors and in dark streets—places where people don’t look for legends. Not because they can’t be there, but because very rarely does the dark have anything good to offer. No, those instances will never make it into tall tales, they’ll never spread to other clans—they will die with the people who they had mattered to. They will simply cease to be, because there will no longer be anyone to remember them.

Except you.

Arling had been born in Hillsmere in the balmiest autumn since the burning sky—so humid it looked like there would not be chance for snow that winter. Of course, that had rapidly changed and caused a strain on the food supply to the capitol. But beyond that there was no great mention to his birth—all twelve clans had been too busy searching for the next _heda_. The last commander had been a woman from the _floudonkru_ —the boat people—who had perished in the mangled wilds of the _rounkru—the_ bone people. He was three autumns old when the _profsas_ from Polis had found him. Had seen the commander’s spirit in his eyes, had bled him and tested him—and the _trikru_ had rejoiced.

All that is known, all that is fact, but it gets obfuscated the longer he lived—the longer he was _heda_. Training, and strategy, and war—those are all moments that were spread and shared. But there is one that slips the minds too easily—he was sixteen autumns when his life had changed. You see the memories when you close your eyes at night, they slip into your mind like a reminder—a promise of who you had been, how you had been loved. Who you loved still. You keep this dead man’s memories safe because you felt a connection with him more so any other before him—more than Marcus Sullivan, or Rahim of the _floudonkru_. Arling had been in your life this whole while, before his memories melted into your mind—before his second had found you at the gates of Polis.

You lose three hundred warriors in an inferno.

And when you close your eyes, you dream you are a dead man.

One moment you are Lexa—Alexander, little sparrow, _skai_ —all those things simultaneously, and then in the time it takes to blink, you are someone different. You are broad shouldered, even if the weight on your shoulders feels just as heavy—you are younger and whole in a way you are unfamiliar with. You feel at home in the dark of Polis’ streets like you never have before—like you’d grown tall here, slipped away through the back alleys only you knew about. Tonight is one of those night—after a particularly brutal training session you needed the air. Your arms aching but loose, rolling your shoulders to get the pinch out.

You see her long before she sees you—her eyes hadn’t adjusted well to the dark as she spills from a quiet food stand and springs blindly down the way. Dirty bare feet are quiet on the gravel, and you wouldn’t have heard her if you hadn’t seen her with your own eyes. Chin tucked down to her chest, arms filled with more food than she could eat—but then again you’d never gone hungry. You don’t know the rumbling pit of hunger—but you do, some distant part of your mind mulls—and you can’t imagine leaving food behind if you were able to carry it.

What would your life had been like if you’d stepped out of her way, shifted ever so slightly so that she’d disappear off into the night—but you don’t. She slams into your legs and topples backwards onto the ground—her haul spilling across the ground and she’s already scrambling to retrieve what she can. The vendor is storming through the dark, a very unsavory knife raised in threat—your heart aches for her, your fingers are already removing your mother’s necklace from where it has always rested around your neck. She can give you another when you visit next season.

“You won’t get away this time, _gahba_ ; I’ll take a whole hand.” You know it is common to take hands as payment for theft—to cleave through the wrist and string them from the sides of merchant carts. And this girl is thin enough that the wind would knock her over—her wrist would crack under a solid grasp. She has given up on most of her things, two loafs of bread tucked into her arms as she scrambles to get away—but she’s caught. The vendor gleefully clasps the back of her neck and keeps her on the ground. Her cheek being dug at by loose rocks, her hands clawing to get free-survival has overtaken hunger, the food is ignored completely. As the man rears his cleaver back to get a proper arc, easily enough to remove her hand—you step forward, and out of the shadows.

“ _Nou_.” He notices you for the first time, his eyes widen and now he is the one scrambling—righting himself, but still keeping his hold on the girl. Her head lowered, piles of dirty blonde hair hiding her face. This man recognizes you, even without your war paint, even without your heavy armor—he knows you, or at least, knows you as well as a stranger can.

“ _Heda_ , this girl has been stealing from me.” You’d gathered as such, but the brightness in his eye is savage and unfeeling—his reverence for you is because he has been conditioned to feel it, not because he wants to. He wants to punish this girl, that is the only thing he wants—not his goods back, not leniency. “Too long, too long.” He says it more to the urchin, shaking her slightly by the back of her neck.

“Take this in exchange.” The necklace holds the largest pearl your father had ever found at sea—it is strung carefully next to well-polished glass. A very nice piece of jewelry—it meant more to you than any of the gold lavished on you once you’d become _heda_. Extending the necklace, he takes it hungrily in his hands, the girl forgotten. It takes little prompting to get him to give it up—because you are who you are, and he has gotten away richer than he’d left his stand. The girl doesn’t seem to be paying you much mind, but you can just make out the set of her eyes behind her hair—narrowed and cast into shadow.

Kneeling you begin picking up the food she’d had in her arms, stacking them carefully and brushing off the dirt that had collected when she’d dropped it. A long stretch of silence is what prompts her to speak—roughly, and still from over an arm’s length away.

“That’s mine.” Petulant, angry—solid. She isn’t afraid, you don’t think she ever had been—desperate, yes, but never afraid.

“No, I paid for all this.” You return with something of a smile, because you can see her jaw tense—see her eyes flash. They’re gray—no, blue. Blue-gray. Like the ocean water of a stormy day—deep and all present.

“That’s mine.” Repetition is a good ploy to use when there is no real solution—say it harder, say it with more growl. Make the other really think about if it was worth it or not. You see the intelligence in her eyes, the way they flicker back and forth. From the food in your hands, to your own dark eyes.

“You must be mistaken.” You are smiling wholly at her now, but you’ve also collected everything—what had been a full arm full to her, fit in the crook of one elbow. Her posture has righted itself and she can’t be more than six—her face still round with youth, her teeth small and missing, and her arms thin like a bird. She’s malnourished, and you don’t think you’ll ever forget the weak wobble of her legs—but despite that she glares, she stands her ground, and her small hands curl into fists.

This girl doesn’t care that you are _heda_ , she doesn’t care that you are heads taller and have more strength in one arm than she does her whole body—the fight burn viciously inside her. It consumes her and fuels her, it is what has gotten her this far—it is what makes survival possible. She is incapable of resignation. She is prideful, and intelligent, and she will not give. But when you extend a hand holding a loaf of bread toward her she flinches—not from fear, but the instinctual recoil of someone who has never had kindness offered. A hand is a weapon.

“Here.” You soften your tone—like how your mother would sing her lullabies when you came home bruised and hurt from training—she’d sooth your pain with her voice. “My names Arling.” There is the recognition that she had kept from you earlier, watching you wearily while shuffling closer to snatch the food from your hand—digging her teeth into it immediately, all the while never turning her eyes away from you. “My _kru_ calls me Al.” Very few did—maybe Indra when she wasn’t being such a know-it-all _branwada_. She chews thoughtfully, taking two more bites before she doesn’t seem as skittish—like she’s ready to dash off into the night.

“That’s a stupid name.” The simple was she says it surprises a laugh out of you—it was said so knowingly. You have a _stupid_ name—almost like she feels sorry for you. You—the commander. She’s pleased, if the way she grinned around her mouthful of food was any indication. She’s a beautiful child—eyes sloped at the edges, thick eyelashes, and cheekbones already high, even under the chub of youth.

“If mine’s so stupid, what’s yours?” Her eyes still—quieting on command—and that is when you see the warrior. Not just the fire, not just the drive—the consideration behind it all. Swallowing her mouthful of food, and nods slightly—having decided to give you this.

“Anya.”The way she says it slants the sounds— _Onya_.

You were going to tease her, see if you could make her laugh, but you can’t. This girl is one of your people, she has existed just beside your attention for her whole life—what kind of leader are you that children go hungry? That they are taken at the wrist for trying to survive. “That’s a beautiful name.”

It takes a while, but she stops looking like she’s about to leave—she sits back on her ankles and piles the food you’ve released into her possession. You ask about her family, and she says she has a younger brother—even though he’s stupid she loves him. She was on her way back to him when the vendor had caught her—he’s two springs younger. Her parents are dead, they died a few winters back from disease. She has lived so much life in her few seasons—she’s fought wars that had nothing to do with battles, without bodies on the ground and blood on her hands. She loves so completely that she would carry her brother on her back until her dying day—to have that conviction so young was wasted on the dark streets of Polis.

If you had only stepped out of the way—if you had left her pass and disappear into the dark, your life would have been lacking. You would never gain a second you loved more than yourself—who was your family in ways your siblings and parents couldn’t comprehend. She was the one you chose. Who didn’t let you get away with things because you were _heda_ , or because you were family. When the _azgeda_ start pushing down, when they start slipping over the border, you plan to end them so that her world could seem alright—so that maybe she could grow up to be whatever she wanted to be. And not a warrior. So that she could live long into the future, and have children of her own—she is the best the world has to offer. She is who you protect.

She is who you fail when you die.

The memories linger after you wake up—they cloud your thoughts and make it difficult to remember who you are, where you are—or more important, when you are. You have Anya’s child’s face scarred into the backs of your eyelids and you just sit where you are—you’d fallen asleep in your throne, your head tipped back into a gap in the antlers. Fully dressed in your armor, the weight of reality settling back to where it had always been on your shoulders.

It seems heavier today.

You thought you’d feel her when she died—that some part of you that had been there since before you were born would know she had ceased to be. The part of you that is Arling—the man who had loved Anya dearly. As his second—as his daughter. You expected there to be a fresh empty place inside you that would always belong to her—but there is nothing. You can’t feel anything because if you did, you wouldn’t be able to go on. You wouldn’t be able to open your eyes and know that this world is still better than it had been in so long. That so many people live now because you had ceased their endless fighting—how many lives you had saved.

Except hers.

You suddenly find it difficult to care about the whole of your people—about the twelve clans and the tens of thousands of people who look to you for leadership. Because the woman who had guided you—who had _found_ you—was dead.

Anya had always seemed larger than life, she had encompassed everything you needed to be, but couldn’t—she didn’t let you make excuses, she held you accountable, and it is because of that that you were able to do anything you’d managed. You had united the clans, yes, but she had showed you how—she fought you every step of the way so that you had to be sure, you had to be passionate. She stoked the fire inside you whenever you felt inclined to simply let it be smothered by the weight of everything you carried with you.

After Costia she made you angry—because that was better than nothing.

After Enrik she made you stubborn—because that was better than resignation.

After Daxon she made you understand—because that was better than guilt.

Who was there left now? How many people had died for your crusade against the world—and now the skies? Victory had always felt like chewing on glass—cutting into your gums and swallowing the pain so that it could sit heavily in your chest. Could dig into your lungs and bleed you out inside—all those bloodless wounds you’d collected over the years. Dying a little more every day. But Anya had made it tolerable—she would set you back on path, she would be what you needed. Even if it was fighting with her—was harsh words and not-so-gentle reminders.

When Gustus finds you in the morning, skin pale from lack of sleep, eyes shadowed with exhaustion, he looks like he wants to offer you comfort—to gather you in his arms like Arling had done for Anya many times before you’d been born. But you are not Arling—you are not Anya—you do not deserve comfort, and you do not deserve to feel anything other than the crippling guilt clenched tight around your heart. You are a demon bathed in the blood of all those you had killed—you just never thought it would include Anya.

“A bounty on any sky person,” you sound untouched—cold and distant, like you’re shouting from the far end of a tunnel and there is no end in sight. You are half the person you had been two days ago—but you are still _heda_ , and you are still at war with ground and sky both. “I want them.”

Brave, and dangerous, and hopeful—why had you never been told hope was the worst thing there was?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, feel free to follow me on tumblr @ **civilorange**


	12. hoping for peace tomorrow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What you want, and what is possible remains two very different things.” You’re weighed down again by armor and weapons, your frame bulkier under the guise of leadership—you know heda is in your bones and blood, as readily as it is your sword and sash.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, after a wait of me fapping about for work, here’s chapter twelve. I had no time for writing until today, and then kind of put it all out at once—which isn’t unusual for me, but still. 8) Indra has always been one of my favorite characters, she always carries herself in such a way that sets her apart. Not untouchable, but so very fallible, so in touch with those who she surrounds herself.
> 
> I’m not sure how I feel about this chapter—mainly the inclusion of an exact scene from the show, dialog wise, at least. I think I’m going to lean more toward alternate scenes that happened in the show—but a twist. Everything is starting to come full circle and we all know how it ends. (In my heartbreak, I know.)
> 
> As always, I'm horrible and have no editor, and when I skim through this tomorrow, I will wonder how English is my first language. 8) Have a good night!

In your mind, there is a wall—one that was being built brick by brick; the foundation set carefully, the mortar mixed well and long, and finally you could begin laying them. Each one had a name—a person who influenced your life. You don’t recognize them all—most of them, yes—but some are just combinations of letters. Sounds tripping off your tongue and into the empty space surrounding you. Some of the bricks are heavy—a weight you struggle beneath, a weight that threatens the soundness of this self-made barrier. These bricks have names you know—names that are etched into the cracked lines of your heart.

There’s _Barlo_ —your father, and _Jamsa_ —your mother. There’s _Costia_ —your love, and _Enrik_ , your brother. There’s _Daxon_ , your friend, and _Anya_ , your mentor. But before them, there was a single discolored brick at the bottom—covered in dirt and chipped by time—it said _Ailbhe_. The girl you were supposed to have been if someone had wanted to keep you. If you hadn’t been alone and nameless, that name would have been yours. You could have been _Ailbhe_ , whoever that was supposed to be—whatever that meant.

You imagine she would have had a nice life, this _Ailbhe_ , this girl in the north—would she have become a warrior? Would her heart clatter in her chest like yours does? Shattering with every struggling beat?

There’s been word of another falling star, toward the vast waste to the west—a small one in comparison to those that had been tumbling from orbit periodically since the whole structure had fallen.

“She died well.” Unlike Gustus, Indra isn’t trying to coddle you—she is remembering Anya, she is settling that stone in the pit of her stomach where she will continue to pay it no mind.

Not until after the battle, not until she can breath and mourn.

“She burned to death.” But you don’t see honor—you don’t see bravery. You see senseless death. You see something you could have prevented if you had been—something more. Stronger, smarter, faster. Anything more than you actually are.

“That doesn’t change anything.” You wish for Gustus’ loyalty, you wish for Anya’s instincts—but you wish most for Indra’s conviction. You want the solid look in her eyes and the straight set of her shoulders that said she would not compromise her codes for anything.

You are the commander, of course, and you cannot be that black and white—you must see the shades of gray between. Everything that isn’t said, only implied.

“It changes everything.” As you turn, your toes dig into the soft dirt, still moist from the last rain, still muddy and messy. You’re stripped down to only the last few scraps of your clothing, and you suddenly feel a child next to your general. She is firm, and absolute, and despite your lacking attire she looks at you with the respect—and reverence—due your position.

Anya had questioned you; she had thrown you to the ground, she had cuffed your ears. She made you steal your moments, she would never hand them to you. She made you with blood, and tears, and broken bones—she cut you and bruised you until the world couldn’t hurt you as readily.

Gustus guarded you; he guided you through the tumultuous nights and the faithless mornings. He looked at you with soft eyes when you thought yourself a monster—he let you feel like a person. His silence was soothing in the prospect to how loud leadership could be.

Indra…Indra just was; she exists outside you, because she has something else to live for. Or she _had_. Daxon had been her world, he had been her reason to fight, to smile, to move on. And you thought she would have given up when he never returned. When you had washed ashore and trudged four miles to the nearest village. When she’d come, expecting her son, and only found you.

You’d been delirious with a fever that night—teeth still chattering from the cold, hair still damp and curling. Your arm was immobilized and curled toward your chest. It had all felt like a dream, like some terrible nightmare that you would wake up from at any moment. You could see the shadows crossing your vision, stepping through the areas of light and sitting at your bedside—waiting for your death. Waiting for you to join them.

You could still remember Daxon so vividly—the hitch to his brow, the bright glint of his smile. He was lovely in all the ways the world tried to demolish—he was kind, and considerate, and thoughtful. He made you better because he made you _want_ to be better—not just for your people, but for yourself.

Beyond all that; beyond how much he meant to you—he was the last lingering pieces of Costia you had to hold onto. He had her so much longer—they’d grown together—she’d taught him English, and he’s taught her _chehkmai_ the strange game with colored squares and a variety of piece shapes. They had been satellites that had fallen so easily into your orbit—they were there when you needed them, silently holding your weight between them so even Anya couldn’t tell you were stumbling.

And they were both gone—Costia so long ago, and Daxon…

You had laid in that unnamed village with furiously cruel dreams, and Indra had thrown open the healer’s tent with vengeance—her eyes bright and wild, her face twisted into something you’d never seen on her before. Terror, and fear, and—so much sadness. She’d looked at you, appraised your broken body—the new holes you’d acquired—and sat her vigilance.

When the scratch in your throat abated, you’d tried to think of something to say—something that could say how much you _hurt_ with her. How Daxon was _stupid_ for choosing you over himself, that you wished it had turned out any other way.

But even in your mind, it had sounded disingenuous—Indra didn’t want to hear how sorry you were, she didn’t want to hear how you wished you could take his place. She wanted to know what you were going to do about it tomorrow—what you would do for your people tomorrow, and every day after.

Indra, who lost, and lost, and lost, was so strong, you couldn’t imagine a world where she would break. When she would not be a pillar for you to rest against, to keep you centered and sure—Gustus had kept you human, Anya had kept you passionate, and Indra—Indra had kept you strong.

Now, on the eve of your most recent war, you can’t hold your silence—your quiet vigil for a boy who’d sacrificed himself for you. The boy who this general of your’s had loved so dearly. How could she swallow her mourning? It felt like every breath you took was smoke and flame, your chest hot and burning and you couldn’t ignore it anymore—not when everything else was absolute cold.

“How do you look at me?” You see the barest tip of consideration, her finger drumming against the plate covering her thigh. She’s taller than you, barely, but barefoot it is more noticeable. “How do you—how _can_ you look at me?”

You see the exact moment she understands—the bright flare, and then the cool appraisal. You’d grown mostly used to it from when she’d scold you and Daxon for bickering—for rough housing indoors, for saying words improper for your station. It was the only times you could remember her smiling—when she’d push Daxon off your back and tell him to go find his mentor— _heda doesn’t have time to play today, boy_.

She isn’t smiling now—she hasn’t smiled since, and that is another failure you string around your throat. The weight of them choked you most days, when you can’t ignore the ghosts lingering just beyond your vision, or all the empty places that people should have been in. Whole parts of your life were empty because you were saving spots for the dead—parents, lovers, brothers, friends, mentors. Everyone, dead.

“You wait until the bat—,” you don’t let her finish, you’re already shaking your head in the negative. Hand raised and muscles tensing, enough that the claw marks marring your shoulder stretch and tear at the edge. Sluggish red seeping into tarnished black fabric.

“No.” You don’t want her mantra of patience—of waiting until after the battle, until everything is settled and your tears will have no company. “He died—,” clearing your throat, maintaining some level of calm—your voice is flat, distant, like someone even you can’t recognize. “Because I was brash—he died.” Because you had been a fool, Daxon had risked his life—he went searching for you, he waited with you—he…weighed himself down with your armor, and took your bullet.

_Born to hang, you’ll never drown._

How were you destined to die? You’d run out of options, because each one seemed to leave you alive.

It was everyone around you that died.

Maybe a broken heart?

“He died because a mountain man killed him,” you can see the glimmer of something other than levelheaded calm, other than placid neutrality—it shouldn’t make you glad that maybe under everything Indra _does_ hate you. “Anything beyond that doesn’t matter.” It _does_. Why can’t she understand that? Why can’t she let you shoulder this blame?

She exhales, her nostrils flaring and her jaw clenching—pulling everything back inside until she was appraising you coolly again. Stepping around the war table, you don’t concede ground as she steps up to you. You feel young when looking at Indra—more so than Gustus, or Anya, or any of your warriors.

She holds herself like the earth—subtle and capable, loyal and strong—she is sharp pieces and round edges and she’s grown into each one. She wears her loss like armor, painted across the curve of her face—she holds those she’d lost close to her. Etched into her skin. She is no hurricane, she is no terrible fire—she is the river, constant and strong, absolute and unyielding. Even rock stood no chance under the resolve of the river, even an army would be swallowed by a strong currant—the river does not seek death, but it does not shy away from it.

“He wasn’t like me, no matter how I tried,” Her voice isn’t soft, but it is quiet—her fingers almost gentle as she pushes at the fabric covering your wound. She makes something of a disgruntled sound at the back of her throat before turning to get medical supplies. “He was a sweet boy, who grew into a kind man.”

“Too kind.” Too foolish with his life, because he somehow thought your life meant anything next to his.

“He would disagree,” she says it quietly, and you know she’s right, because he had always looked at you with furrowed brows, as if he could not comprehend the idea of _too much_ kindness. “He’d say the world needs more kindness.”

“The world needs a lot of things.” The way the words slip from your chapped lips are like air hissing from a pin prick; the words escaping on an exhaled breath. So many things—it needed less wars on all sides, it needed middle grounds, and understanding, it needed compromises and sacrifice. You’re running out of gambits to play for the sake of the world—you’re running out of plays to make.

When Indra returns it takes little prompting for you to settle back into a chair, quietly appeasing. You are _heda_ , but this woman has been patching you up since you were a child. When you’d been young, you’d fidget and squirm, but you take the prodding with ease now—you’ve bled and broken everything at least once.

“It needs you.” She doesn’t even look at you when she says this—her fingers pulling at the fabric of your shirt, clotted blood tugged free with it and sluggish red begins the slow, but constant, drip down your collarbones. You don’t even feel it, because you feel like you’ve been trapped into a conversation you didn’t want to have. You want her to _hate_ you, so that you could justify hating yourself—you want her _angry_ because it makes everything you feel inside correct and you don’t have to be at war anymore.

You can hate yourself and no longer need explanation of excuse.

“It needs the commander,” it’s easy to disagree with her now, even if it had been taxing in the past, because inside you know you’re right—or maybe you just want to be right. “If I died, another will be chosen.”

“If the commander alone was all that was needed, the world would have been fixed long before you.” Indra would make a good storyteller—she had the quiet gravitas that a word weaver needs. A soft severity that gave everything depth. She had never believed the world broken before—it was constant and known, and for someone like Indra that was the most important thing. But since you—since you’d begun your crusade, she’d started using terms like _fixed_.

And that was more validation than anything—that Indra saw it, that you had made her understand.

Your jaw works, but whatever you intend to say is caught somewhere in your chest—the struggle is absent from your face, but that doesn’t mean Indra can’t see it in your eyes. Her fingertips are red with your blood, the cloth in her had crimson and soaked with herbal salve. It stings, but it is nothing in comparison to the claws that had made the wound the first time.

“He’s dead.” Despite the soft drift of her words, Indra breaks the silence like a crack in ice, her eyes still set on the task at hand, and pressing paste along the edge of the gouge, pushing a wrap flush against it. Tight enough to be uncomfortable, but not hinder your motion. “Nothing will change that, nothing will make that better—but making what he believed in possible? I can do that.”

All this power—all this might—and you can never save those closest to you. This woman who is pushing your pieces back together, she could be the next—she could join her son in your graveyard, with the souls weighing you down. What’s another in the grand scheme of things?

“What did he believe in?” He believed so many things that hurt him—because they were impossibilities; flights of fancy that could never be because the world simply didn’t know how to kneel.

Lifting the hem of your dark shirt, she presses testing fingers against the slightly tender skin around the wound on your stomach—seemingly content that you hadn’t continued to mangle this one. Stepping back, like her hands weren’t red with your blood, like there wasn’t the finest of mists in her eyes.

“You.” She’s pulling the mountains back into her shoulders, all her insecurities drowning in the steady river—muffling fear, and uncertainty, and everything else that could possibly hinder her. “He believed in you.”

* * *

Hesitation doesn’t belong in battle—where lives hang on every obtained moment, when death lingers like wings upon every warriors back, when a stuttering moment can linger like a gunshot for seasons to come. Those are your moments—that is your element. You’d been forged hastily in battle; not a sword carefully crafted for war, smoothed and hammer into perfection. No, you are the sharp rock gripped desperately in the hands of those who have just enough to live for to warrant fighting. That the hope for peace tomorrow, will justify the blood, and pain, and suffering of today. You are makeshift and tested, because you have never faltered—you had slung yourself clumsily into war, and the deities had somehow found you worthy.

No, hesitation doesn’t belong in war.

But before the battle lines are drown, before the horn is blown?

That is when you pause for consideration, for the consumption of knowledge.

That is when you measure you enemy and define war—are you at odds with their way of life, had they been unjust, were they vile, or was this a conflict without footnotes. Was this a war waged because it always had been—because there were differences that unsettled and made pieces ill-fitting? You’d pressed edges together that didn’t fit perfectly—clans and tribes and cultures; they sat side by side, if never truly a whole. They were wobbling reflections that could recognize each other now—because they didn’t have to duck speeding arrows, and hastily swung blades—they could find likeness when there had only been difference before.

Civil war had never been so civil, after all.

Gustus had been against this plan, he had toted the idea of mindless slaughter over even the _idea_ that harm could come to you—that you would be unarmed and armorless. He knows—truly—that even stripped bare you would never be those things—you are a weapon, honed and sharpened, even if hastily forged. He sees glimpses of what these two sky men surely see—a defenseless girl at the mercy of those larger, of those with power, of those with ideas and intentions. But he knows better—he knows truly that you are the only authority on this ground. You are edict and lawlessness both—you are whim and statute.

Your lame leg is an exaggeration to an ailment that actually gives you worry—the stiff rotation of your hip, a result of twisting improperly while avoiding the _lepah_ ’s claws, surely made worse by your haste to reach Anya—a senseless agitation now that you hold her death inside you. She lingers like a bloodless wound in your chest, drying your veins with bitter cold and hapless nothing. You are _heda_ now, only and truly—because you have decried Lexa, as you had Little Sparrow, and _strik heda_ —as you had all the people you’d been before. The orphan, the apprentice, the wolf, the lover, the friend—in the end, you can only be the conqueror. You ache with the disassociation, but you can’t be them—not now, when it hurts so horribly you think yourself incapable of being anything else.

The cracks inside that had always existed, Anya had been the first to truly see them—she saw the fissures that lingers in your eyes, and the pinch of your lips. How you’d been broken for so long you hadn’t even realized—you hadn’t felt the things you were missing, until they’d been offered to you with trepidation and caution. You hadn’t been able to miss love, and warmth, and safety—because those things had never been a part of your world before Enrik, and Costia, and Anya, and Gustus. These people who saw edges of you so clearly—but the parts of you that lingered in shadow would surprise them. The demon that lurks in your bones like marrow, that keeps you strong when everything human about you shattered—those fissures widening and splitting you open.

In the muffling quiet of this cell, your heart limps along slowly—calmly—there is a peace to this, to watching these foreigners in your land. It is a tether you had long released in favor of being a warmonger and a tribute—to being a mortal deity and a totem. You are your father’s body seer once more—stripped down to clothing that fit a merchant more than a commander. Rough fabric, ripped and worn through—a length of fabric slung loosely over your intricately twisted hair. They pay you little mind, they let their eyes take you in for only moments before they determine that you are not worth the consideration—there is an elation in your chest, beside the festering wound that is your loss. It had been so long since someone had not determined that you were the most dangerous creature in the room—there is an ease in being overlooked.

They are night and day—not only in appearance, but in tone. They are two parts of a question being asked too quietly to answer—there is a muffled desperation to them both, but for different reasons.

“They want us to turn on each other.” This man, Thelonious, is inherently selfish—not cruelly, not truly, but he thinks of the world in terms of himself. His journey, his people, his pain, his morality. He does not live in accordance to the ground beneath his feet—when you are king of the stars, who cares what is whispered in the forest?

You speak, watching them out of the corner of your eye, “They want justice.”

“Lives have been lost on both sides.” There is a crawling sadness to this Marcus Kane—it lingers in him like a disease that he will never overcome—one he will live with until his dying day, one that has him searching for remedies—he does not know what you learned long ago. The sadness with never abate, it will never leave—it is you, in all the ways that count. “That’s why we need to end this war!”

It is now that you decide that Marcus Kane is your answer—he is frustration at war with optimism. He is a bundled truth that is heavy because sometimes that doesn’t matter—even when it should. He is genuine, where his counterpart is bargaining—he is looking for a weakness in the wall set before him.

You can round your shoulders, and faux a limp—but the hard edge of your eyes could not be properly mistaken if you were to raise them—especially not when this fallen king steps closer to impress upon you urgent familiarity. “What’s your name?” He doesn’t realize what a difficult question that truly is—you are so many people, but no one at the same time. Pinching your brow, you settle for an honest lie—a false truth.

“Lexa.”

“Lexa.” The way your name rests on his tongue is foreign and cumbersome—the letters sound wrong, like you have been saying it improperly this whole life of yours. He commands the letters with authority—like it is his right to change how they are slanted, like it is by his will that the sound that you have been known by, should be changed. “I’m Thelonious, this is Marcus. Your commander spoke of an assassin in a village?”

The clench of your jaw is taxing, your teeth crushed together to bite back the natural rumble struggling to be free of your throat—three hundred warriors is a loss of war, it is a battle lost. But the slaughter in that village had been monstrous and cruel. It had turned your stomach because these people think you savage and barbarian—but they massacre the weak, they purge the elderly, they tear through the children. They are indignant, and self-righteous.

“Yes.” The word is too hard, too firm, and you swallow back some conviction—tilt eyes up through lashes to seem young. You know the slant of your cheek, the set of your eyes—and it works, his lips pinch and he leans closer still. “Eighteen of our people were murdered—elders—children.”

Thelonious is consideration—he is calculation and response, he is learning new information and planning to react properly.

Marcus is disgust—he is explanation and insistence, as if by protesting loud enough, and long enough, he will slip reprisal. “We had nothing to do with that.”

“It doesn’t matter; the commander thinks you did. One of you must pick up the knife. That is our way.”

“And if we refuse?”

And now you will be honest—because this facade digs into you in strange places. In ways you haven’t had to think about in so many seasons. These men do not see the blood soaked crown heavy upon your head—spires made of tarnished metal and rusted wire. They do not know they speak to a conquering child king—that their sovereignty over stars means nothing in this kingdom of yours. They seek human connection, but they are far too late to find it—you’d lost that so long ago.

“Then the commander will use it to slit both your throats.”

* * *

He sits across from you, rubbing at his wrists, even though the chain had been around his ankle—it is human, to sooth away the fright of captivity, to relish in the assumed freedom. But no one is truly free—this man is still at your mercy, he is alive only because you are an unyielding barrier, because your word is law, and your laws are maintained with blood.

“I’m glad you see that we only want peace.” His relief is palpable, you can feel it like sodden cotton upon your tongue—heavy and uncomfortable, because he still can’t understand what you’re offering him, what you’d had beaten into the dethroned king on the other side of the wall.

“What you want, and what is possible remains two very different things.” You’re weighed down again by armor and weapons, your frame bulkier under the guise of leadership—you know _heda_ is in your bones and blood, as readily as it is your sword and sash. But this man needs to see the veil dropped, see the regal press of your spine, and the lopsided slant of your posture. You have always projected conflicting body language—disorienting and unsettling to those settled under your stare. Alert lethargy, as only a wolf can.

“It doesn’t have to be.” He’s earnest, and you think of how your world will shatter him—he hold sacrifice on his shoulders like the weight will crush him, that it is his punishment to hold aloft those that had perished to bring his people this far. He is so many seasons your senior—but he’s only just learning the price or survival.

Of stepping outside what is accepted, and having to kill people for that discrepancy.

People would die either way—maybe the exact same tally, but somehow those in correlation to choices made are heavier.

Their weight impossible to comprehend, but smothering all the same.

“I have no time for _raun sheidgeda_ ,” it felt like only moments had passed since Anya had accused you of being the exact same thing. “Dreamers.” You translate, and you see the intelligence in his soft eyes—cracking, dulling eyes, and some piece of you mourns this discovery of his.

“Sometimes all you have are dreams,” he leans forward, hands pressed against the edge of the table—still keeping his limbs to himself, as if you might lop his fingers clean off if he strays too close. “My people fell from the _sky_ for a dream.” He still relishes his journey—through cloud and air, from the ink black of night.

Against your better judgement—against the sneering warmonger in your chest—you like Marcus Kane. He is a man at odds with himself because he wishes to be better—he wants to atone for lofty sins he holds himself accountable for. He doesn’t know that that guilt belongs to him now in a way nothing else will—because he cannot regret it. He cannot apologies, because he is the willing sacrifice. Not of flesh and bone, but of soul and serenity.

“Dreams may bring you someplace you wish to be,” you don’t lean with your words, not like him, you turn your attention to the blade stabbed tip first into the arm of your chair. “They cannot keep you there.”

Dreams had created the coalition—it had cemented _ah won kru_ in your mind, and in your creaking breaking heart. Over time you’d somehow disassociated to the creation of that desire—you push it off onto Costia—or even Daxon—like they had fostered the spirit to move forward, to shift whole clans and move entire dynasties. As if somehow now that you’ve cemented yourself in reality—in war, and survival, and death—you are incapable of dreaming.

“There must be some compromise—medicine, technology, gu—.” Your raised hand stops him, your dagger pushed harshly into the sheath at your waist as you stand.

“I need not make concessions.” You don’t want their _technology_ , their _medicine_ , and especially not their _guns_. You want them gone—out of your war, away from your crusade. You will give them this reprieve—you will grant them leave of your land, to the place beyond society, where those who cannot live within exist.

“Your _chancellor_ is giving word to your people of their choice—and it is their choice.” You offer them their peace, on your terms. It is concession enough. “Leave for the waste by dawn, or die.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Drop me a line on tumblr @ **civil orange** , I don't bite, promise. 8) Also, I did some doodling for this with my meager artistic skill. [i'm the next picasso.](http://civilorange.tumblr.com/post/125614151899/idek-instead-of-writing-i-started-doodling-i-am)


	13. just holding the blade

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What you did tonight will haunt you until the end of your days,” it will linger like a chill in her bones, a shiver in her veins, an ache in her joints. It will always be there, even when she can’t feel it—you know this because you hold so many matching pains.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whamp. Omg, so I got sick this weekend, and somehow while cracked up on cold syrup, I wrote this. Medicated creativity? I don't know if I can trust it. I'm not sure how many more chapters will fall into the season-two timeline. From this point on, I will be taking more liberties with the plot. Things are changing just enough in this version of the verse, that I feel alright diverging while writing the transition scenes between the ones actually in the show. And yes, some of these start in the middle of canon scenes; IDEK why I decided to do that, but somehow it made sense.
> 
> Let it be known, I've never been sure what my opinion on Finn was; I honestly hadn't paid him much mind until his death, then he got so much more interesting for me. Isn't that weird? As always, please ignore my atrocious mistakes; there's probably more than usual considering the state I wrote in.

 

If she hadn’t sought you out, there would have been something hard in your chest—you aren’t sure what. Thought less of her? Been disappointed? You are not wrong about people, human nature is something you have learned about in the harshest ways. So there is no surprise in your when whisper reaches you that the sky princess—the felicitator of three hundred dead warriors—walks to treat with you. You wait, slanted into your throne, arrogant chiseled into each of your many angles—you wear it like armor more worthy than the metal upon your shoulders and the leather encasing your chest.

It has saved your life more than any physical barrier ever can—in a world looking for weakness, it find very little in you. It exists—down in places that have gone cold and foreign, places that might still have the chance to hear your heart beat. You have given them until dawn to weigh their worth, to realize the uselessness of their stand and to slip off into the dark—to make their home somewhere that was not yours.

You can hear the click of teeth from outside, a harsh intimidating sound that your howlers make to frighten the sky girl—this golden leader. It is the disconcerting chit of bone, sharp and rhythmic—it is barbaric in ways war chants and bellows cannot reach. It is the animal manner of it—no words, and no full lungs—it is warning and promise both.

Outside, Gustus rumbles a threat—you cannot hear it, but you know it exists—and you wait. Your face set behind a applied layer of black war paint—you wear it more now, there are only infrequent moments that it does not grace the curve of your cheeks. It hides the hollows beneath your eyes, proof of restless nights and lethargic nightmares. Night is when the dead can hold onto you—you can ignore the ice of their fingers during the day, but you grow stronger under the moon. When the barrier between life and death blurs into that of dream and reality—you belong to them then, and you cannot fault them their claim.

As long as they give you back in the morning.

You don’t look when she enters—the dagger settled into your palms turns absently, the blade polished and glinting. How long had you had this blade? You can hardly remember a time when it didn’t grace your side—you can only remember how large it had seemed in your childish hands. Impossible to grip properly, to wield effectively—you had killed your first man with this blade. Had thrust it forward into a bandit’s throat without thought—an instinct set deep in your stomach, long before even you realized.

“You’re the one who burned three hundred of my warriors alive. “ _And Anya_ —that was the true crime that dug into your mind, it pulled at your thoughts and tore through your calm. It would have upended you had you not heard the exhale of shock— _you_ , drifting aimlessly into the air of the tent. Looking up, she regards you with startled realization. She must not have seen you as she entered, Indra’s scowl and your _jusbrotas_ bulk drawing her eye long before your lean frame set lethargically into a antler throat.

Her spring sky eyes are thrown wide her lips wordlessly parsing through whatever else she’d intended to say. She traces your features with her gaze—the line of your nose, the slant of your cheeks, the jut of your chin. She’s remembering splatters of blood, and thick pale paste in a different pattern—but she seems to settle on your eyes. The green of your father’s people had always seemed unwelcome in the dens of the wood’s people—where dark features were prominent.

It isn’t until you see her that you can feel the phantom warmth of her body—how she had pressed into you as you blocked her from harm. That night. Even from here you can tell she doesn’t smell like wood smoke anymore—there is a artificial odor to her skin, obviously the scent of stars and sky. She’s trying to match you against the absent warrior she’d met that night—wounded in ways that had nothing to do with the blood leaking from the cracks in your person.

You’d been able to forgive her many things that night—but today she’s transgressed too far.

“ _Bants_.” Your _jusbrotas_ don’t hesistate, they leave briskly and surely take up post outside—physical barriers between you and the rest of the world. Indra and Gustus look like they consider protesting—it is the clench of their jaw, the grit of their teeth, but they too leave. Throwing back colored fabric and spilling out into the day. It is only you, and Clarke—this sky princess.

“You’re the commander.” Like this should shock you, like you should be just as unsuspecting of this fact as she is.

“I am.” Even now, like she had that night, she doesn’t shy away from your gaze—if anything she searches for it. One step closer, her fingers rubbing together like she’s used to something gracing her fingertips—an artist, or a farmer. The cuts look out of place on the beautiful lines of her face. Unnatural and wrong—and you had never thought that.

No, that’s a lie.

You had thought the thin cuts along Costia’s face had seemed wrong—somehow more so than the fact that her head had been sent to you. That violence you could put aware for no further that—but those small little promises that worse had happened first. _That_ had been ruin.

“Do you have an answer for me, Clarke of the sky people?” Would they be gone by dawn, would they be dead, would they, would they, would they.

“I’ve come to make you an offer.” You listen to her story—to the impossibilities that are too farfetched, too ridiculous—until she said Anya’s name. The syllables don’t curl on Clarke’s tongue, it is _Ahnya_ , when said—not _Onya_ , as you can still remember how she’d introduced herself to Alring at six years ago.

“With Anya.” It is like you’ve been kicked in the chest by a mighty stallion, your ribs cracking inward to stick through all the vital tender parts of you that you thought protected. Three syllables, two words— _with Anya_ —and you are without breath. You’ve held it in unintentionally, keeping your face bland—it isn’t until black dots chitter into the corners of your eyes that you frown, and lean forward.

No longer the passive conqueror.

You are beast, and vengeance, and cruelty incarnate.

You are not woods clan by birth, nor by nurture—but you do know what a taken braid in the hand means. It is death, it is tribute, and it is honor. Anya had carried Arling’s against her heart for as long as you had known her. She had told you it was to keep her safe—she’d give you that jackal grin after, smearing your face with mud and telling you how loud you were while hunting. _Strik pauna_.

The hair feels false in your hand, pliant and wrong because Anya had been so full of life, she had been fire and passion and action. But now she is dead—not even in the way you’d thought. She’d been alive in all the ways you’d struggled with—in your heart, in your lungs, in the warmth of your finger lips.

“She told me you were her second.” The term had always been rarely mentioned—because you were _heda_ , you were the chosen leader, but she had taught you how to be that person. How to lead when you couldn’t maintain even yourself.

Maybe you could have saved her—maybe you could have done something.

You can only doubt for the time it takes to blink before you recognize the reddish tint of her hair, the texture familiar from when you’d been young and she hadn’t batted away your hands when you’d reached for her. This is home—this muddy braid of hairs. More than any northern village, more than Polis or _Tondisi_ —Anya had been home, in the same way as Costia, and Enrik, and Gustus.

Some people make home in the desert, or the forest—or sterile false mountains.

Standing, walking forward, entering her space like she is the earth, and you the satellite in her orbit. It is a reversal you can’t quiet reconcile with. But she doesn’t look away, she does flinch and look down. She keeps your eyes, she holds her ground— _did she die well_? Because while it doesn’t matter to you—bravery is foolish, death isn’t a reward—you must know for her.

“You could have stopped this.” She says this like breathing—exhaling the words, her shoulder raising and then falling in consternation. “You’re the commander.” Saying it again must make it more real for her.

“I am.” It is the easiest thing to acknowledge—because before anything else, you are _heda_. “And I didn’t.” It isn’t pride, or arrogance—you cannot regret, you cannot doubt. Because while you still have killed Anya—she’d just suffered first—she’d reached out and fought Clarke’s hand, instead of her own.

“Why?” How could she not understand?

“Because you are the devil I don’t know,” because she fell at the worst moment, because the ground could no longer catch hurdling shells of chrome and glass. Because you had seen their willful disregard for order—unpredictable and dangerous and vapid. “Better the one I do.”

The mountain.

The excitement in her eyes is strange and foreign, something that seems to linger in only children—she has promises to make, and deals to exchange. Stepping closer so that her breath fans across the blades of your cheeks, you can find the smaller than small flecks of gold in her eyes. Chips of color that can only enhance the blue of her eyes—her words are sure, her promise lofty and unheard of. Chasing your gaze over her face, you settle back on her eyes and exhale sharply through your nose, flaring your nostrils as one brow quirks.

“Prove it. Show me Lincoln.”

* * *

Humanity. You’ve never felt comfortable with the definition of this word—it had always seemed self-indulgent and false. A brittle sound in the dark of night to justify blood you couldn’t quiet see anymore—it was still there, but swallowed by the black readily enough that you could pretend. Pretend that you somehow fit the criteria for this lofty word— _humanity_.

If you had none, were you still human?

Costia had tried to teach you this—tried to instill in you something so rudimentary she’d had difficulty explaining it. The inherent _humanness_ of every person on the planet—of something so assured that it was impossible to quantify. She would equate it to other words— _compassion_ and _understanding_ , _kindness_ and _consideration_. All concepts you could understand on their own—but to say these things are inherent to humans as a whole? They were traits that were learned and evolved—molded into the make of someone as much as any scar or tattoo.

But _humanity_ , how arrogant was the human race that they had equated themselves to righteousness?

Hadn’t they lost the right to their inherent _humanity_ when they’d set the sky aflame? Hadn’t they lost their moral high ground when they divided themselves with imaginary lines—things so inconsequential, so inane.

Humanity isn’t kindness—it isn’t compassion.

Humans had never had the right to define themselves.

It is drawing lines in the dirt—us and them, right and wrong, sky and ground—it is justification, and explanation, and brittle broken hope that when everything calms down—and you’ve clawed through your last demon…you aren’t one yourself. Humanity is telling yourself that you’re right, even if you’re so very wrong—because without that validation, without that reason to stand up, everyone would be on their backs.

Those who are truly human—who have true humanity—are already dead, because there is no room in this world for compassion, or kindness, or consideration.

Only survival.

You can taste the bloodlust in the air, thick and harsh, filling your nostrils and vibrating along your bones. Outside your warriors are products of this world—raised with war so that anything else is foreign, surrounded in vile, cruel tradition because anything less would garner weakness. Punishment must be harsh—so that the laws of this world aren’t breached with impunity.

Their hatred has a face this night—their animosity has a name. Finn Collins.

Nothing more than a boy. They had dragged him before you like a prize that had been caught, and you’d seen nothing more than a scared child—he is frantic and unsure, confusion bleeding into the lines of his face. Bruises marring his skin where your warriors had gotten too eager for punishment. This isn’t a murderer—maybe in body, but not soul. His eyes are unfocused and soft, his lips bowed into silent apology.

“You murdered eighteen of my people.” You don’t need to raise your voice to startle him, he wasn’t aware of the world—he existed inside his head now.

You can’t make out what he says, it might be _I didn’t_ , it might be _I’m sorry_ , but in the end he just squeezes his eyes shut and sags against the hold your _jusbrotas_ have on him. Buckling like the weight had been there this whole time and it had finally taken him to his knees—it only takes the slightest tip of your hand for them to release him.

There is no fight in this sky boy—there are no more stars in his blood, no constellations in his bones.

He is dirt, and blood, and death.

He is scared.

“What’s—” He’s choking on tears that he can’t cry—but his throat is thick with them, and his mouth dry. “What’s going to happen to me?” Nothing worse than what was already happening inside him—the graveyard he was making meticulously with every heavy thought, with every guilty swallow. The graves were there, names he did not know etched into each—and off in the far corner, was an empty plot.

Reserved for him.

His graveyard is leagues smaller than your own—yours is miles wide, with a thousand different names, all but a handful, unrecognizable.

You ask him, “What do you deserve?”

Crouching down before this scared murderous boy, you rest your weight on your toes, your forearms on your knees—even like this you’re still tower over him, his spine bent in half, his fists clutching the dirt below. His forehead pressed into the clenched balls of his fists.

“I can see them.” As he says this, his voice cracks, wet with the tears that he can’t seem to hold in—the wobble of fear, the thin reediness of desperation. He hold ghosts inside him now, they linger behind his eyelids as well as they do his open eyes—they follow him like imprinted ducklings. Until the end of his days.

He has only candle marks left.

“I know.” You say this quieter than you’d intended, and silently swallow the _me too_ that you cannot let free. “Tell me, Finn Collins, what do you deserve?”

You have no doubt that he knows—your warriors say he walked right to them.

A sacrificial lamb before the wolf.

He says something, but you can’t make it out—his words wet and whispered, his forehead pressing harshly into his hands, one of his nails bleeding from where he thoughtlessly dug it into a stone.

“You see them,” you say this firmly to this sky boy, holding onto your ground so desperately. What kept them steady in the clouds? Nothing, you imagine. “And they see you. Do not disgrace them, Finn Collins, you take this on your feet.” He can simper, and he can cry—but he will do so with a straight spine. He will have something of honor—this boy with a murderers body, and a broken child’s eyes.

“You killed them. Eighteen innocent people, and you will honor them.” He’s quieting, stilling—but his grip on the rock is tightening. You don’t know if you want him to strike out—to fight, to reclaim his backbone—but he lets it go and sits back on his heels. His pale face smudged with dirt and blood—mottled with cuts and bruises. His eyes dark and wide, clean lines of skin cut through the muck from where tears still fall silently.

You stand, and step back, watching silently as he staggers listlessly to his feet—the shadows beneath his eyes thick with torment. He’s still bent under the weight, still brittle and threatening to crumble, but he stays standing, his hands loose and bloody at his sides.

“I’m going to die.” You know this is the first time he’s said it—the first time he’s really looked at the reality of this situation and swallowed the hardest truth of all.

Everyone dies.

Including him.

“You are.” In this you are the same—you are graveyards both, but he cannot meet the eyes of his ghosts. He cannot keep his chin up with them tightening fingers slowly around his throat—hanging bonelessly from his shoulders.

He doesn’t flinch when you step toward him, when you extend your hand for the length of rope your _jusbrota_ intended to wrap around his wrists. You do it yourself—tight enough that he cannot escape, loose enough that you know he won’t try to.

“ _Jus drein jus daun_ ,” you say as you finish the final knot, looking over his shoulder at Enrik—your own phantom—the _whetkru_ boy’s smile is strained and sad, and you keep his dark gaze as you exhale slowly.

“What does that mean?” He asks, his hands bound and limp in front of his, his cheeks rubbed against his shoulders to remove the signs of his tears.

“Blood must have blood.”

Finn Collins smiles—strained and sad—and the haunting familiarity of it makes you search for Enrik once more—but he’s gone. You’re left with just this sky boy, and his ghosts. His voice shakes only a little when he says, “Alright.”

* * *

“We are what we are.” This sky girl doesn’t understand that you can no longer see the color of your palms under the blood on your hands—that your soul has been sold piece by piece to the highest bidder. That _Lexa_ barely exists any longer; that she has been devoured messily by the jungle cat teeth of _heda_ . That the girl who may have balked at being called _savage_ had died so many season ago—long before stars started falling from the sky.

“Then I’m a killer.” You wonder how many times she’s thought this silently to herself—she said it with the same conviction the sky boy had said _I’m going to die_. You see the crack in her eyes more clearly in the light of a thousand torches—like the shattered fissure in that frozen river so long ago. The first indication that many would die—it isn’t the soulless abandon that had eighteen villagers slaughter. No, it is the slow creaking shatter of foot thick ice—maybe not today, or tomorrow.

But soon.

“I burned three hundred of your people; I slit a man’s throat and watched him die.” She lists her sins like gouges on her chest, a warrior’s chant—but there is no pride, no boastful lilt. This is sickening sadness, this is haunting realization. “I’m soaked in grounder blood; take me.” In the sky their blood float away into the stars, to be forgotten and mourned—but never seen again. But down here, on the ground, the blood sinks into the dirt, it bleeds into the trees and settles at the beds of rivers—the grave of three hundred warriors sets just to the east, a twisted mess of charred bone and piles of brittle ash.

Just as there is a river to the north filled with the frozen bodies of the army you had massacred—you know that if you travel there on the warmest of spring days, you can see through the ice to the open frosted eyes of your dead.

They wait for you there—in their forever winter.

“But Finn is guilty.” He had taken those who had _humanity_ still—those who deserved more than this world had to offer. More than blood, and dirt, and death—more than dark tomorrows and red yesterdays. Finn Collins had cracked, and succumbed—and he had taken those undeserving of the dark with him. Eighteen innocents—eighteen people who would not be able to understand monsters like you, and martyrs like Clarke Griffin, and broken soldiers like Finn Collins.

That is his true crime.

“No, he did it for me.” Clarke’s voice cracks, “he did it for me.” the tear thickening in her lashes, but they still do not fall—they gather and glint, and her eyes are bright in the dark. They hold you, capture you, and you want to give her what she asks for—mercy, or understanding, or something otherworldly. The moon and stars, peace and tranquility—but those thoughts belong to Lexa, and she hasn’t truly existed for so long.

You are _heda_ , and _heda_ cannot afford gainless mercy.

You speak softly, low enough that you know only she hears, “But he still did it.” Intent can only justify so much, it can only settle so many blood depts.—and whatever the sky boy had thought could not outweigh the death covering him from head to toe. Could not absolve him of guilt, could not atone for his theft. He will join those he had taken—he will shepherd them into the next life, and there he will atone. He will exist side by side with them, cleansed in fire as they are.

Clarke doesn’t speak, his lips half open as if another protest lives on her tongue. The first tear slips down her cheek, ad by the vacant look in her eyes you know she doesn’t notice. She watches you like a dying man might his killer—accepting that there would be no last moment rescue, that there would be no salvation. There is no craft to the way her mind turns, and her eyes follow, lingering low—spilling her intentions into her gaze, and you can’t help the reflexive clench of your jaw.

 _Don’t_ , you plead inwardly _, don’t make me_. You understand the thought, the _desire_ , she might have to slip her hidden dagger into your throat—to kill you for all your transgressions against her, but you don’t want to kill her. Just as you hadn’t that night in the forest—something about her calls to you, something delicate and carefully crafted stays your hand when so many others would have simply perished.

“Can I say goodbye?”

You can’t give her his life—but you can give her what she asked for. Mercy. It is a kindness you have not afforded to many. Looking at Finn, you can only see Enrik—his burned and tortured body slung against a post, his skin peeled away, and still his flayed lips had smiled for you. He had given you forgiveness, because he was so much better than you—he was human, and flawed, and broken—and for that, he had died. He had tried—so hard—for people who would never try for him in return. He had spilled gallons of his own blood for wars that had meant nothing—and when you had driven your sword through him, he had thanked you. Not with words, but with his eyes—soft and broken, just as this sky boy’s are.

No, you cannot give Clarke his life—it is already spoken for, it had been from the moment he lost himself to madness. You search for that brittle crack inside her, the one widening further every breath she takes, but it is pushed deep into the blue of her eyes—behind the reflective burn of amber glinting through the galaxies trapped in her gaze. In her you see the shattered reflection in the clench of her jaw, and the half curl of her fingers— _please, don’t make me_.

You won’t.

It isn’t even a nod, just the slightest tip of your chin before you look beyond her to Finn—his dark eyes impossibly glassy in the dark. He looks at Clarke like she might very well set the sun at the horizon every morning—like he was darkness and she the first warmth he had even felt on the pale of his face. No one should ever look at another like that—the world is more than infatuation and love, it has no place for limiting affection.

This is resignation.

You feel Indra and Gustus’ eyes on you, you can just make out their shadows at your side—they were trying to understand the curve of your cheek and the slant of your nose. As if they had never seen you before. But you can only watch as a broken girl walks the endless space between her and the hardest decision she’s made—the three hundred warriors she had burned had been a salvation, it had been tense moments and screaming chaos. It was _us_ or _them_ , it was life and death, and it was war. So much can happen in war, so much you never thought yourself capable of—so much that makes you cringe, and cry, and break. It is loud, and sharp, it is bright colors in a world that had always been in monochrome.

This festering choice will linger in Clarke’s heart until the end, it will rot and ruin so much inside her if she lets it. It is the quiet that makes it wrong—makes is twisted and macabre, because this isn’t war. This is peace—or what amounts to it on the ground. This boy, dead of body—and this girl, dead of heart.

If only you knew to not doubt Clarke of the Sky People’s heart—of its strength, and kindness, and _humanity_.

Will the sky’s princess be safe from kill marks as well?

Will there be no proof of her bloodletting, because there would be too many to endure?

You don’t want that for her.

You know you’re too late.

Their embrace is intimate, it is a communion of child soldiers who knew only how to lean on each other—they would do it this last time. They would grin bloodletting smiles one last time, their brittle jaws and chrome teeth just holding back everything they wanted to say. They only had a moment. You can see his trembling lips parse out the words _I’m scared_ , how his eyes turn upward to the home he had known—before the green of trees, and the red of blood, and the blue of water. When his word had been claustrophobic metal and artificial air.

Can he see his home in the dark?

Can he make out the glint of what remains?

The drifting carcass of home—the bent bones of what had once been his everything.

You can’t see the exact moment she plunges the knife into him, but you can see the gratitude smooth the furrow of his brow, the pain tucked away in his dulling eyes, the sadness cloaking the fading light—he looks at you for a moment, a passing gaze as he searches for something that is already pressed against his chest.

He loved so recklessly he had killed himself on her blade.

He loved so poorly he’d set the world against him and tarnished the glint of affection.

 _Yu gonplei ste odon_ , you think, watching the downward pitch of his head, the tremble in Clarke’s shoulders, and the foreshadowing drip of dark onto the ground. You can feel the fire blaze through your warriors—feel the burn in their blood, and the ash in their mouths. Silence can be shattered with only a step—as this golden sky girl steps back to show her slain boy soldier, everything erupts.

They move like starved predators with the scent of copper in the air—a living, breathing entity that is connecting in so many ways you pretend don’t include you—like you can’t feel their inhalations in your chest, their savagery in your blood. They writhe and lash forward, held back only with the lift of your arm—five fingers, a delicate wrist, and the authority of the deities behind it.

“It is done.” Not loudly, not harshly—but you are firm, your eyes stone and your lips pressed. You are your mask of kohl, you are the lives you’ve taken—conqueror, _heda_ , wolf—maybe there isn’t much difference between them after all.

Maybe it had only been little sparrow, and Lexa, and _Skai_ that had shattered.

However the sky people see them, these are your savages—your people, your warriors—they belong to you in ways the stars couldn’t even fathom. And it is because of that their writhing, seething anger is expunged—no, it is swallowed. Eyes of all shade and color regard you with confusion—an almost childish question of _why_. You heed you, but they don’t know why—even Indra’s eyebrows are furrowed close, her dark eyes angry and hot and solid.

Only Gustus seems to understand—his lips only slightly parted, though most of his expression is lost to the coarse twists of his beard. He remembers Enrik, and he remembers Costia, and he remembers Anya so vividly—he holds you loses for you when you are unable to carry them. Moments, seconds, blinks of time—and he understands this mercy you grant. This lofty permission that sours tradition and twists expectation.

But you are _heda_ , you are the iron tether that holds the twelve clans together.

You slaughtered the northern dynasty, and quelled the swamp’s demon.

If you grant permission to this sky princess; no one would question you.

* * *

“This isn’t our ways.” Indra is insistent, her hand never leaving the pommel of her blade—the leather creaking under the strength of her grip. “She dishonored tradition.”

She doesn’t say, _and you allowed her to_.

“Do you question me?” It’s ground out slowly, through your clenched teeth, a whisper of air holding the words—you know she isn’t, not really. Indra holds you in her chest in place of her heart—when there is peace, she will slot the staggering beat back into place. But until then, she is your general wholly.

“No, _heda_ ,” those gathered in the room are only your most trusted—your _jusbrotas_ , Nyko and Gustus mill in the dark between flickering torches, their large frames tossing shadows across the open space of the warrior’s barracks. Indra the only voice other than your own.

“Tradition demanded much blood when I allied the twelve clans,” so much—the _trikru_ and the _azgeda_ alone could have drowned Polis in the amount of owed blood. “But I granted clemency; I washed our slates clean so that we may stand together.”

You fold your hands at the small of your back, your wrists loose, your arms lax—but your fingers hook like claws around each other, digging short sharp nails into the soft skin of your knuckles. _Tradition_ is what had made you something to be hunted and found—it is what had dug claws into your life and ripped it open to bleed. You’d never had much love for tradition—you’d been raised without it, but you allow these things for the clans. You watch as they wrap what is known around themselves as a comfort—even if those things demand blood.

“The sky people stand with us now, and I grant them this same courtesy.” As Nyko and Gustus leave, Indra still had conflict at the corners of her dark eyes—your blood kin watch her like they never have before, their jungle cat smiles shown and clenched, their wildling hands curled at the edges of their weapons.

This isn’t what Indra looks like when she’s lost herself—you’ve seen that, for a brief moment in the middle of your delirium. When her son was dead, and her commander broken—you’d seen her madness them.

This isn’t it.

“The _azgeda_ understood tyranny, so I took them as spoils when I killed their _kwin_.” You don’t owe her explanation, but she must know your heart is steady and your mind sharp. You are her absolution. “The sky people think us savage, without moral or thought. They think they understand mercy.” You can be everything, to everyone, while being nothing to no one—you had claimed the life owed to you, if not the other seventeen.

These fallen sky dwellers think they are benevolent and merciful—that it is somehow inherent to them. But you saw the weight on Marcus’ shoulders—the similarities that linger like blood in the water. They are too raw to see it now, they are too sharp and dangerous with anxiety to ponder the world around them.

You are patient.

“Think of the sky people as you would a bow, Indra.” This close, it is as intimate as a leader can be with their general—she’s intent, eyes focused on you. “Tax the bow too quickly, and it will break—and it is no use to anyone shattered. You must bend them as you would wood; carefully, and with skill.” You do not offer touch casually, despite the tactile nature of your people—you are separate, you are _other_ —but you settle a hand on Indra’s shoulder, the slightest weight of contact, but it is enough. It is a hand offered, and taken. Stepping out, you step between shadows, spilling into all the dark quiet places in the encampment.

You’d granted Clarke allowances that were unheard of—it hadn’t been hard to usher her into the safety of your tent, to give her cool water and a rag. Her blue eyes had been spilling with everything she wasn’t saying, everything you know she had inside. You hadn’t spoken either, you’d simply held her gaze as she began to tremble, as everything pressed, and pushed, and promised to break her.

And it would have done her a disservice to watch.

A tight nod, and an abrupt exit had been your way to honor her as a leader.

But as a person—as _Lexa_ —you longed to stay.

You announce yourself by pushing forcefully at the flap closing your space off from the rest of the camp—the darkness spilling inside, pressing back the light until you’ve stepped inside. Warmth licking at your bones, feeling returning to your fingers where you hadn’t realized you’d been clenching your sword hilt.

Sat upon your furs, her eyes too wide, and her movements stilted and inhuman—like she can’t quite understand that the fingers presented before her are indeed hers. That the blood coating them belonged to someone who’s name she knew without thought or hesitation. Her face is wet, and her breathing ragged—you had intended to give this solitude to her, but she does not bask in the quiet. It is too loud.

Putting your blade down, you step closer—as one might a doe in the forest, quiet and carefully. This girl isn’t prey, but you don’t think she knows that. Not just yet—someday she will realize how many stars she had devoured in her life—how many impossibilities were etched into her bones.

Someday. Not today.

She doesn’t hear you, because she starts when you clasp her bloody hands between your own—Finn’s blood rubbing off onto your own fingers, and it only seems right that you share this with her. “Do not shoulder the inevitable.” Her fingers are small—in actuality they are not much smaller than your own, but they _seem_ smaller—delicate and smooth where yours have formed callouses and scars. She trembles, and tries to tug free only once in instinct before she accepts your hold—it is intimate, and inside _you_ tremble, because the heart so many were sure you didn’t have, was pounding fiercely inside your chest.

“It was only inevitable, because of _me_.” The sob is dry, even as her eyes flood again with tears—she is crumbling, stretched thin and gasping for breath.

“What you did tonight will haunt you until the end of your days,” it will linger like a chill in her bones, a shiver in her veins, an ache in her joints. It will always be there, even when she can’t feel it—you know this because you hold so many matching pains. Each one has a name you recite in your head every so often—to remember why you hurt. “But know you did him a kindness; he isn’t your ghost to carry.”

Maybe Clarke doesn’t understand the dead that follow you—not as Finn had learned—you haven’t seen them in her eyes yet, but maybe you hadn’t looked close enough.

“I killed him.” In the same way Finn had said _I’m going to die_ , resigned, accepting—slotting back into reality.

“You were just holding the blade,” she had killed Finn just as you had killed three hundred of your warriors—you hadn’t burned them, but you’d put them in that ring of fire.

Blame is endless if you allow it to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, follow me @ **civilorange** on tumblr. Prompts, comments, suggestions wlecome there; and also the ridiculous things I reblog.


	14. a traitor must pay with blood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “But it survived,” you couldn’t _understand_ why, so when you’d been loaned to the tanner, you’d asked, and plead, and wallowed. “It made it through winter fine enough the other times.”
> 
> You couldn’t understand then how you could rot away inside and still look untouched outside. How it taxed and broke to struggle and stay firm lipped. You had been bright eyed and passionate—you had been broken, and hadn’t even known it.
> 
> “It couldn’t handle it anymore,” the tanner had said, leaving you to tend to the furnace. “It got tired, _dahlen_. It just didn’t have another winter in it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here's the chapter I was dreading since the beginning. Gustus' death. I didn't want to rehash the scenes from the show; it all fell into line in all the basic same ways. This is about the aftermath. I felt like there should have been something to show how detrimental this was for Lexa; this last person she cares about is killed by her own hand. Only days after her mentor is killed. Even the strongest person would break.
> 
> Also, aesthetics change. I suddenly decided to hate parentheses. I know, I'm sorry, I keep doing this to you.

You don’t know how his blood got on your hands, the red is sharp and horrible against the pale of your palms, against the glint of your nails. No, they look more like claws. Curved and dangerous, befitting the monster you are. Rubbing your fingertips together it seems impossible how _hot_ his blood still is, the taste of copper on your tongue, like rolling bullets around your teeth. With how hard your jaw is clenched it might very well be your teeth—particularly the golden molar you worry with your tongue when you’re restless, the metal taste comforting, and the smooth foreignness somehow right. It was tribute to your father—who maintained that he had no daughter, until the day he died (face down in dirty red snow, in some unnamed forest).

As your fingers rub, and rub, and rub the skin begins to peel away like rotting, blistering flesh—mottled with red, and wet with viscous fluid. Yellow and sick and rotting. You’ve been festering inside for longer than you’ve realized—organs shriveling and blackening, sick with disease and bloating with death. But it had been below your skin, hidden away from all those who orbited you like crashing satellites, your gravity pulling them closer, and closer, and closer, until they crashed into you as burnt up meteors. You are a black hole, swallowing light from the vacuum of space—devouring anything hopeful enough to settle in your sphere of influence.

Working your fingers into fists, the ligaments and tendons tighten and snap through the soft, wet skin of your mangles paws—skin slopping listlessly to the dirt floor below. And somehow, Gustus’ blood remains—red, and sharp, and _maddening_ against the white of your bone. Staining you not only outwardly, but inside—in places you pretend done exist because you are only an ideal, a morality, a force of nature. Never a person, never someone who hurts and struggles and _bleeds_. You’re breaking apart because so much of you is your belief that you are _heda_ , you are something beyond mortal coils and human thoughts. You are eternal, even if you are not immortal—chosen, and found, and molded, and _other_.

Why does none of that help you now?

Why can’t that keep you together?

Gustus had been dead, and cold, and _there_ —his body had rebelled and it had been an effort to plunge your blade through the weight of his chest. His muscles had gripped and held the sharp edge of your sword— _strik pasa_ , a sword given to you by the last man foolish enough to love you. A man who had met the exact same fate—your steel set between the third and fourth rib, plunged swiftly through beating muscle and sucking blood. No one ever talks about how the dead hold your blade, how difficult it is to pull free against the cooling muscles of those who are no longer.

Gustus’ body had held your sword like he had always wish to hold you.

Without reservation.

Thinking about him makes you sick, it turns your stomach and makes your knees weak—everything inside is revolting and breaking down. You can feel bile on the back of your tongue that tastes like blood—tangy and sweet, sharp and metallic. Your dead man’s hands claw shamelessly at your face—catching the blade of your cheekbone and the give of your lips. Pushing against your eyes so harshly that your vision blackens and bursts of color splash against the insides of your eyelids—the buzzing gets louder, the trill of sound turning into a cacophony of madness that drums against the inside of your skull like war chants and howling bellows.

 _Ste yuj_ —stay strong. How can you? How can you be anything but weak, how could he _do_ this to you? Anya had been your passion, she’d been your strength, she’d showed you how to lead by forcing you to—Gustus had been your comfort, he had been your solid center, he showed you that no matter how vile the things you must do for your people, you are human—you are flesh, and blood, and flawed. And they are both dead; you had killed them both with your resolute need for tomorrow. For the future—for this world molded by your gnarled paws.

You’ve always known you wouldn’t be welcome in the future you build—it is for the innocent, those who flinch away from war and violence and vile cruel things. It is for children who aren’t raise with weapons in their palms, and poets who are forced to fight wars—people with soft eyes, and sweet smiles. You don’t belong there, you are a haunt that will cease to be if that future comes to pass—and you had been alright with that, you had never balked or cursed you allotted place in the world. But Costia—and Enrik—and Daxon—and Anya—and Gustus. You’d imagined them there; you’d done it in small part for those who you…love?

Are you capable of that?

The word is sour and foul.

It has lost definition.

Loved, or not. They had been _yours_ , and you had crafted them a tomorrow—one they would never see. Your hands of bleached bone scratch over the curve of your forehead, into the mess of braids that have begun to undo—tightening into the natural curls you try to tame, try to diminish because they mark you as northern. Your knees are numb, and you haven’t realized you’d fallen to them—hit them harshly and your weight had extended backwards to rest your shoulder blades against the cement of the wall. The strain in your thighs pinpricks of pain, racing through your muscles and reminding you that—despite everything—despite what seems to be—you are alive.

“I hate you.” You don’t recognize your voice—it is scratchy and hollow, rasping from the edges of your throat that have gone dry. Your eyes burn because if you had been anyone other than who you are—you’d cry. But you’ve long forgotten how to; the dry ducts allow red to crack and crawl across the whites of your eyes, making you look manic, and tired, and broken. “I hate you.” Maybe if you say it enough, you’ll believe it—maybe it will become true and this can hurt _less_. But no matter how many times you chant it— _I hate you, I hate you, I hate you_ —it will never be true.

When you pull your hands away, they are whole, and only the tips of your nails are red—from where you had dug them into your scalp without realizing. They are unblemished and Gustus’ blood does not stain your calloused tan skin. Your mind is broken and spread, all your pieces tipped carelessly out of your possession and lost to the endless dark that you have always lived in. You can’t lift your arms, they are impossibly heavy at your sides, egregiously aching like you had hefted the world onto your shoulders—instead of simply driven a blade through a mortal man.

Your hands rest palm up on your thighs, and you think how horribly unassuming they are—you’ve killed _thousands_ , so many with your bare hands, with swords and arrows and daggers, but beyond that. You’d sentenced _generations_ to death, armies to the cold bottom of rivers, _hundreds_ to rings of fire. You are bathed, and made, in the blood of your kin—you are death, and ruin, and destruction. And the worst part is that people _love_ you for it—you see it in the manic glint in their eyes. What exactly they were willing to do for you, and you can’t have that mindless loyalty anymore—you don’t want that kind of power.

You’re heartless, and soulless, and everything you touch burns.

Your protector is dead, he was cut, and burned, and flayed, and when he could take no more, you had driven your weapon through the gap in his lungs he had taught you to find on instinct. Killing isn’t second nature, it is the musk that fills your nostrils when you take the first deep breath of the morning—it is the ache behind your eyes when you lose focus of the world. It is so much a part of you, that you know it can’t be cut away—it can’t be removed for softer edges and smoother sides.

When your eyes raise from where you’d been staring blankly at the ground you see him—Gustus’ frame tall and sure against the shadow of the far side of your hall. He watches you with quiet eyes, his jaw unhinged and bloody—his chest bare and flayed, pieces of ink stained skin peeled away to gather dirt on the ground. He is raw and eternally dying; one of his eyes is punctured, the bloody fluid dripping down his cheek. He is mangled, and ruined, and barely human but you don’t have it in you to fear him—after all, you are exactly the same. Only your decay is inside—after all, some of the worst monsters are pretty as a picture.

“I hate you.” _I hate you, I hate you, I hate you._ Except you don’t, because Gustus’ only fault was thinking you human—of remembering the girl you had been, once upon a time. A wolf who had gotten so good at pretending that even those closest to you hadn’t realized just how sharp your teeth are. “I hate you.” With vehemence, with the facsimile of feeling—but inside you’re…empty. You’re done, and cold, and numb—your shards of mirror reflecting images that simply can’t be a whole person.

“You were supposed to outlive me!” No commander has lived past twenty five. It had been the thought at the back of both your minds whenever you met eyes—he wanted you alive, and you wanted…you didn’t want to die, you just wanted peace. And despite how you had rallied your stolen kingdom to your cozen of unity, and peace, and _tomorrow_ , you have always known the only peace comes with death.

Your forced clamber to your feet is leonine—you’re graceful even in desolation, you’re still an all-powerful puppet on strings tethered to no one. All your makers are dead—you’re free of influence, you’re void of opinion. You are a beast that has slipped the lead you’d always been on—no matter how you’d thought otherwise. Anya would be alive if you had been able to shake the weight of what her disappointment would have felt like. If you had been _heda_ truly, you would have dragged her brutally from a lost and useless conflict.

There is an untethered _other_ to your motions as you pivot to catch sight of your face in the shard of polished glass—your eyes are wide and wild, the black of your pupil blown large to consume the muddied green of your iris. The perfectly practiced and scratched lines of your war paint have smudged and bled to places it doesn’t belong—over the bridge of your nose, up across the slope of your forehead like two curled horns that slip into the intricacies of your hair. There a madness to you—the type that has always lurked in your chest, the one that remembers the _red, red, red_ blood of a bandit when you’d only been a child.

“You were the only one left who’d miss _me_.” Not _heda_ of the twelve clans, not the child king or the dynasty slayer. The stupid girl who’d nearly cut her fingers off because she hadn’t known how to heft an axe properly. The solemn girl who had only cried when no one was looking—or so she thought. He was always aware of her. He never pulled her to his chest in a hug, but he stayed—he always stayed, even when you asked—no, _ordered_ —him to let you be. He was always there.

With every death that you hold inside you, you cease to be a little more—you cut off whole aspects of yourself like proofs of life. Snipped away and sent far off like that had never been to begin with. You know that if you die there will be celebrations—that your name will live on until your people have prospered enough to burn the sky themselves. You will be just as the first commander is—remembered.

Your armor is impossibly loud against the dirt, your dagger spins out and lodges tip first into the seat of your throne. You’re removing pieces of clothing like they are definitions and explanations—armor and weapons tossed to the ground as if you could cease being _heda_ , if only for a moment. The literal weight is off your shoulders, the strain removed—but you still feel so _heavy_. You are Atlas, holding the heaven’s up by the strength of your back alone—you hold it there so that your people may never fear the heat of the stars.

But you’d failed them in that, hadn’t you?

They know celestial fire in the empty places where people are meant to be—those who had gone forward in your name, in your honor, and never returned. You are not just the nightmare that enemies fear, your own people must fear you just as readily—you kill just as many as them. You are soaked, and drowning in familiar blood, you can’t hope to inhale without filling with red.

You seem so small without your anointed crimson fabric and golden trinkets that mark you as _what_ you are—not _who_. You are not human, you can’t be. Because _humanity_ has left you so long ago. Maybe it had never lived inside you at all—maybe that had been what your father saw when he decided you were a wolf. When he had been so sad, and so certain—what about you had made it known to him? _No, dear heart_ , that had been the only time he’d called you that, when he looked at you and realized his only blood kin was a infantile monster. _You’re a wolf if I’ve ever seen one_.

Gustus watches you without sound from the corner, his mottled and bloody eyes unfocused, but you know he’s looking _at you_. You killed him. You’re his murderer. In the thin charcoal gray of your sleeveless shirt, and the worn through black of your pants you could be anyone, the war paint on your face is smudged and ruined enough that there is no discernable pattern, and the golden cog between your brows had fallen loose somewhere in the tent (you’ll search desperately for it later)—you don’t look much like the commander. You feel so much older than your eighteen summers—ancient in places that will never see the sun because they are burrowed deep inside. Places in your mind, and your spirit—the slate gray of the graveyard you carry in place of your heart.

You can’t bear the weight of this particular poltergeist, you can’t stomach the harbinger lilt of his eyes, and the forgiving quirk of his mouth—so you turn away. This hall is dark because you hadn’t set any lights when you’d entered—you’d been mechanical and without thought, you’d slunk away into the quiet because it had felt right. You’d grown used to the black of night, and it takes you whole lungfuls of air to find Anya—she’s not deformed, she’s not muddy, or burnt, or drained of blood. She’s young—impossibly young. The small street urchin that Arling had found that night—her eyes are wide, and her cheeks round. Her clothes are tattered and stained, her weight shifting restlessly from either of her feet—the soles of which are crusted with old blood.

She hadn’t had shoes.

Even as a child her face had been angular, but somehow youth softens her in crippling way—her eyes slanted but to large, her mouth pouting but still scowling.

“You killed me.” Her voice is child soft, like she has learned that raising her voice wouldn’t help her—no one listened. “Why did you kill me?” You can feel the part of your spirit that will always belong to Arling swell and press against the inside of your chest—you had never known this Anya, you hadn’t been the man who raised her, and protected her. You hadn’t died in her arms.

You killed her.

“ _Wamplei_.” She says it simply, as only a child can, her small hand raised to point a single finger at you.

And isn’t it that simple? Isn’t that what you are?

Death.

You’re inarticulate as you lower yourself into your throne, your father’s dagger tight in your hand—fingers so tight you lose feeling of them quickly, not that you notice. Not that you care.

Your ghosts slip out of the cracks in your mind—each one tentative and careful, because you had gotten so good at keeping them in their graves. You father lounges against the trunk holding the gifts the residents of _Tondisi_ had given you—his smile wide and golden. Your mother huddles in the corner, like she will never get warm again—her eyes foggy with sickness and her fingers shuttering with weakness.

Costia’s the closest to you—sat up on your war table, her bare feet swinging back and forth thoughtlessly. You can hear the far off _ain_ that she had breathed into your ear at night—her dark skin pressed into the warmth of your summer tan. She is whole, and beautiful, and just the sight of her makes your chest clench—she’s wearing the dress you’d won at the festival for her. It was blue, and yellow, and green—bright, like she is. Costia deserves color.

Enrik is wide and resolute, his arms crossed against his chest, his chin tipped down just enough that he has to roll his dark eyes up to watch you. And he does watch you. Assessing and assured that you are the person his small, harmless friend had grown into—that you had rotted, and ruined, and mangled yourself so much that he had trouble recognizing you.

You wonder where Daxon is—why he doesn’t haunt you like the rest, why his spirit is content and settled. But he’d always been like that, hadn’t he? Accepting and amiable, the world would be what the world was. His ghost never lingered in your mind like the others; he always had places to be, things to do. People to save. He didn’t have time for your self-loathing.

“There is a word...” You say into the air, your gaze finding the space just above Costia’s shoulder; her baleful eyes metallic and loving. “Rumination.” She’d told you once or twice to stop _ruminating_ about something you’d done—usually something that didn’t deserve your hours of scowling. You have a much better grasp on English now, but words slip your mind every so often. Costia’s ghosts bobs her head once in agreement, companionable silence remaining with your dead.

“Thinking about all the bad,” you aren’t expecting this voice, and the hair on the back of your neck bristles, snapping eyes to find Clarke Griffin standing just inside the entrance. She looks out of place next to all your dead—even with her sky pale skin and her haunted sad blue eyes. She’s alive—you can remember how she’d pressed into you—she is _warm_ , and _here_. “Like worry, but worse. Because there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Your mouth is dry, your eyes hard, because you don’t like being caught unaware—you don’t like the feeling of the corner at your back, and everything people _expect_ you to feel in their face.

“Then it’s pointless; if you can’t change it, there’s no reason to think on it.” Like the great doors hiding the mountain men, all your walls and masks fall seamlessly into place. Your fingers loosening around the dagger set tip first into the arm of your throne, your fingers curling just enough to hide the blood in the beds of your nails from where you’d cut your scalp.

“Sometimes you can’t help it.” There’s a searching quality to her eyes, her lips pressed together though they part every so often for her tongue to dart out and wet her chapped lips.

You don’t answer, you don’t do much of anything—your haunts circle Clarke, but you have eyes for only her. You’ve grown accustomed to ignoring them, to existing beside them. To keep your madness unknown, tucked away behind your indifference and stoicism.

“Why are you here, Clarke?”

Her throat bobs with a hard swallow, her eyes darting away, before she meets your gaze again. Determined, resolute. “I wanted to see how you are.”

“I’m fine.” Immediate, firm.

Annoyance bridges the edges of her eyes and she takes a step closer, “Bullshit.”

That surprises you, though it doesn’t quiet catch on your features—brows lifted in question, eyes a little wide. “Excuse me?”

“That’s bullshit, Lexa.” She says your name with emphasis—not like Jaha, who had changed the way it sounded, like you were primitive and couldn’t understand your mistake—but like she knows the weight of your name. What it means to you, how _little_ you hear it. It is a statement in and of itself.

“I saw you.” You want to say something sharp and snide about how obvious that was, you were right in front of her, but the distance in her eyes stops you. “You aren’t fine.”

No, you aren’t. You are impossibly far from fine—so far that you can’t even begin to make out what _fine_ looks like. Maybe it is crystal clear skies, and lush green grass—maybe it is Polis during the spring, or the islands south of here in the summer. It could be so many things that you had taken for granted when you’d been merely a materialistic mongrel—selling a man the shirt he wore on his very back.

“You don’t know me, Clarke.” You can’t pin down exactly why you say her name so often—maybe because of how much yours means to you. Does she hear hers as much as she should?

“I know you’re hurting.” Another step closer to you, blue eyes beseeching and hand half raised, “You cared about him.”

You jaw clenches, hard.

She continues, “You knew what I was going to do.” The blasé mask that tips into place is to cover your surprise—no, not surprise exactly, but this sky girl can read a person better than most. That is more dangerous than any sword or bow—at least to you.

She’s caught ground, she’s found her hand hold, her words wondering, “With Finn.” She’s at the bottom of your dais, her hands loose at her sides. “You knew. And you still let me say goodbye.”

She doesn’t say it, but you can still hear, _let me kill him_. You say nothing, you will not deny her claim—you will not lie—but you cannot speak.

“Why didn’t you—,” _why didn’t you save Gustus the torture?_ The confusion is in her frown, it is in the line of her far too delicate shoulders. She thinks because you allowed a boy from the sky to die mercifully, you are able to do that at will.

You interrupt her, “A traitor must pay with blood.” You look directly at her, trying not to see how Gustus’ deformed phantom lingers in the dark, how he watches you with mutilated eyes. “It is our way.”

Costia is flickering, her shape and color bleeding away before filling in—she stands from the table, just behind Clarke and the contrast is startling. Night and day. The only thing that is the same is that beseeching way they smile—only half there, more at the corners of their eyes. Costia had known how much you needed that smile—how it help filter out the bad that festered inside. Clarke just can’t help herself.

“He wasn’t just a traitor, he was…” She says, trailing off when she realizes she doesn’t exactly know what Gustus was to you.

“He’s dead.” Standing up, you step closer, her breath fanning across the blades of your cheeks, her eyes dancing from somewhere just south of your eyes, and then up, to your gaze. “And we have a war to plan, Clarke of the sky people.”

Brushing past her, your shoulder just hitches against hers—alive, and warm, and _here_ —your ghosts watch you go, sitting in the dark and waiting. They’ll wait for your return—they always do.

“No time to ruminate?” She sounds further away than she is, but the buzz in your ears is getting louder. She must be watching you go—trying to couple the regal tip of your shoulders and the iron length of your spine with the bare feet and shattered eyes of the girl she’d almost witnessed.

You respond without turning around, “No.”

* * *

Outside your village when you’d been small, there had been a sapling—brash and arrogant, it had grown through the layers of snow on the ground, and dared sprout two small yellow-green leaves. All the other trees were bare branches reaching through the gray cold—dead. And here were these two little leaves—not particular large, or particularly bright, but in the white of winter they were the only color for miles.

When spring came, the sapling got a little bigger—stronger and taller, but no more leaves to be spoken of. Two more winters passed until you walked back to the orphanage to see the tree had grown black and rotted. The leaves had shriveled and browned, and you had cried—something about seeing the absence of that color had upset you. It had shaken something inside you.

“But it survived,” you couldn’t _understand_ why, so when you’d been loaned to the tanner, you’d asked, and plead, and wallowed. “It made it through winter fine enough the other times.”

You couldn’t understand then how you could rot away inside and still look untouched outside. How it taxed and broke to struggle and stay firm lipped. You had been bright eyed and passionate—you had been broken, and hadn’t even known it.

“It couldn’t handle it anymore,” the tanner had said, leaving you to tend to the furnace. “It got tired, _dahlen_. It just didn’t have another winter in it.”

 You are that sapling—no matter how tall, or how strong—you don’t have another winter left in you.

 _Tondisi_ is larger than many villages, but still small enough that it is typically overlooked—it is a forward outpost in regard to any warriors heading toward the Mountain. They are familiar with unfamiliar faces, they are accepting of the wraiths that drift to and fro—boys and girls who had been tossed into war too young. They slather dark paint on their face in hopes that the enemy won’t see how scared they really are—that was what you had done, when there had still been fear in your marrow.

You stay away from the main passages, not wanting to interrupt the gatherings—celebrating life, in the face of death. There are fires bright in so many places that you’ve turned into the residential side of the village—cobbled together houses far away from the visiting warriors, and more importantly—the visiting sky people. The children were shepherd to sleep long ago, tucked into bed just as the moon woke to kiss the night.

At least they’re supposed to be.

You had stopped to look up—trying to find your bright quick star, knowing you never will—when a weight hits into the backs of your calves. Almost buckling at the knees if you hadn’t spun and reached down to catch the culprit.

Wide blue eyes blink at you in surprise, like you were the one who had knocked into them. The child can’t be more than five, their face chubby and soft, and their eyes bright and fearless. You immediately take in the pattern of paint on their face—it isn’t kohl, more like some home crafted finger-paint. But the pattern— _that’s_ familiar, even if it is crude and shaky. Three strikes down either of her cheeks, dark paint shadowing her eyes and trailing off into the hair above her ears.

“It’s late, _yongon_ ; shouldn’t you be in bed?” She’s caught between your hands, looking so excited—but _nervous_ —and you think it’s because she recognizes you, even if you had scrubbed the kohl off your face.

“Washon said _heda_ ’s here,” she says like a conspirator, like you are outside the loop, that she’s doing you a service by telling you, like you should know who _Washon_ is. “I don’t want to miss her. She’ll be _gone_ by the time I wake up.” Spat between missing teeth with enthusiasm; she is too young to know why the fires burn so bright, why the warriors look so harrowing.

There is music, and noise, and so many new people—to a child that is something worth sneaking out for. She’s wearing thin soled shoes and light gray shift meant to be slept in—a makeshift weapon belt was cinched around her waist, a wooden sword resting proudly on her hip. A little commander indeed.

“Your _nomon_ must be worried.” You’re looking for anyone who could help this girl find her way home, but there is no one—just the distant bellows of the feasts.

Her face quiets slightly, her lips pursed just enough that you are worried you’d done something wrong. “I don’t have a _nomon_.” Another orphan in this world of them, she blinks wide and unbothered up at you—she didn’t know how to miss what she never had. But for a moment you have her attention, not simply as a pit stop until she finds _heda_.

She must decide something about you is worthy because she raises her arms—at first you aren’t sure why, but you then realize she wants to be picked up. She’s tired, even if she had intended to wander the village looking for someone she obviously didn’t know on sight.

You pick her up awkwardly, her weight slight, but you’d never had to hold a child, but she wraps her legs around your hip and her arms your neck. Finger-paint smudged face resting against your injured shoulder but you can’t find it in yourself to mind. She’s feather light once you get used to holding her, but you don’t know where you’re supposed to be bringing her.

“I don’t either.” You confide, slotting yourself beside her in that endless line of orphans. She looks up through her eyelashes and you as struck by the blue of her eyes—they aren’t common to the woods clan, so you wonder who her mother would have been if she’d still been here. “ _Yu laik_?”

Her name is a drowsy, “Sonian.” Against your throat as you shift back and forth slowly, like you’re easing warm blood back into numb limbs. Searching through the dark for any idea of where she had come from before she’d bumped into your legs.

All you find is Gustus.

Not as he had been earlier—he’s whole, and younger. The man who had found you on the front lines, who had kept you alive. He’s smiling—a rare enough sight, but he looks content. Something about the lines of his lifted lips, the crinkle at the corner of his eyes. Standing off into the shadows of the trees, his hand resting on the hilt of the blade he always carried, the collar of his coat lifted.

“ _Der_.” Sonian mumbles while pointing further into the residential part of _Tondisi_. Gustus just watched you, soft dark eyes, lax and forgiving face. _Stay strong_. No time to _ruminate_ , no time to linger.

This young girl is alive, and warm in your arms—she is who you are building tomorrow. So that she may never find reason to fear the world, so that she can keep this trust in her heart. She is the antithesis of your ghosts, she is the future—not the past—she is not a lingering wound. No. She is the balm to the burnt and scarred edges of your soul—there is no cure for _what_ you are, for what you’ve had to do, but there is temporary measures.

There are salves that can keep you together long enough for Sonian to grow tall and strong, for her to inherit a ground worth keeping.

“ _Der_.” It’s a tired order, impatient at having to repeat herself, her fist thumping lightly against your chest before curling into your shirt.

Pinching her lightly on the leg, “ _Sha, strik heda_.” You grouse back, making sure there is no one around to see the smallest of smiles on your lips. Gustus—your most recent mortal wound—but he will still be there when you finally concede to mortality. He’ll always be there—he always has been.

Sonian giggles and nods enthusiastically, her cheek rubbing against you and you feel something in your chest that isn’t so heavy, isn’t so dark. It is life, and light, and something worth holding dear. It is the moments you remember with people who are no longer—memories that are tainted by pain and death. By how things ended.

When you find her home, it is a slanted hut with four walls and a strong roof, there is a boy asleep in the front room who is at least fourteen seasons old—his clothes holding the sash of a second. Sonian murmured how this is her _bro_ , Washon. You nod slowly, taking in the dirty lines on his face, and the fresh callouses on his palms.

Laying the girl in her swaddled mess of furs, you unbuckle the makeshift belt and set it aside on the floor. She’s rolling onto her side away from you, and you think she’s already asleep before she turns abruptly—her blue eyes wide, though they are so tired and unfocused. You find a wet cloth, and begin wiping away as much of the paint as you can—and you match now, hints of black at your hairlines and at the curves of your cheeks.

“I’m gonna miss _heda._ ” She sounds so _sad_ to have not met you—someone she has somehow fooled herself into looking up to. She begins to shuffle about like she’s going to get up, and you still her efforts. Tucking her in beneath layers of fur, making sure they were pulled up to her chin—it was how Enrik used to put you to bed when you’d been too stubborn to go on your own.

“You’ll do no such thing.” You’re talking too quietly, but you don’t want to unsettle how her eyelids are drooping, how she’s going lax and soft in the bundle of furs. “When I come back, I’ll ask for Chieftain Sonian. My greatest general.”

Her mouth opens in amazement, her face lighting up like she’s seen the tomorrow you intend to build for her—maybe this is enough for now. Pressing your finger against your lips, asking for her silence, she nods seriously like you’ve given her a firm order. Something her _heda_ has personally asked of her.

Brushing some of her dark hair out of her already drooping eyes, you murmur _sheidgeda_ , and stand. Ducking out of the low doorway, Washon is awake and alert, his hand wrapped tightly—and improperly—around the hilt of a dagger. “ _Chil yo daun, gona_.” He flushes and goes to stammer something.

“Take care of her, Washon.” It’s a solemn request—beyond commander and warrior, as people, as fellow orphans. It is what separates you from your ghosts. You’re alive, and here, and these children are depending on you.

He takes the request in much the same way his _sis_ did—an order they are ready to follow to the end. “ _Sha_ , _heda_.” His young chin tipped up and down slowly, his hand thumping against his chest. You return the salute and he is _elated_ , and you have to leave before you begin doubting. Before you dig, and pull, and ruin—before you _ruminate_.

Nodding, you walk out of the slanted shack at the edge of _Tondisi_.

You walk past Gustus, and Anya, and Enrik, and Costia.

Your ghosts will stay with you until the end of your days—they can have you then.

But not today.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come say _hey_ to me on tumblr @ **civilorange**. I learned for to open my ask box, so feel free to ask me anything! 8)


	15. stars are forever

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “It’ll heal.” All things physical do.
> 
> “Not if you keep this up,” Clarke’s palm is hot against the skin of your shoulder, soft and yet strong, kneading the tightening muscle of your shoulder while she presses fabric to your wound. Soaking up the weeping blood, trying to keep you together despite the fact that you had shattered long before she’d even set foot on the ground.
> 
> “Worried for me, Clarke of the sky people?” Your voice is too rough, warm with amusement, and you’re snared in the blue of her gaze as she finally looks up from where she is binding your arm to your chest. Her breath is fogging only slightly in the chill, but it’s warm against your chin as her hands seem to settle on the unassuming curve of your shoulder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. I wrote a whole chapter, felt kind of good about it, and then realized I had my timeline all backwards. So, apparently I can't be trusted with chronology. I've started outlining the sequel, which is yet unnamed, and I'm pretty happy with the results. In much the same way the Grounders have depth and history, I wanted this new culture to have some, even if it is completely fabricated by me. 8) I might leak a few sneak peeks of the sequel the closer I get to finishing this. I imagine three or four more chapters? Might round out at twenty, just for even's sake.
> 
> As usual, all mistakes are my own, because i am the world's worst proof reader, and I'm sorry you have to put up with me. 8) I'll catch them when I do my read through later, after I've kind of forgotten what I wrote; fresh eyes and all that. A little shorter than usual, so apologies, but a little more Clexa this chapter!

How many of your generals look in the mirror and see the enemy? Do they search their features for similarities to those they despise without reason? Do they forsake the color of their eyes, or the heights of their cheeks? So many of them boil with such profound loathing that you think it must simply run through their veins instead of blood. It lives inside of them, growing, and festering, and corrupting, until there is a single indisputable moment that they snap—that they step over that imaginary line they’d been aware of their whole lives, and damn the consequences.

This day is Quint’s.

You can see it in the bristling of his posture, long before he opens his mouth, you can see a harbinger in his eyes, even though they still chase away from your own gaze. You can almost hear the grit of his teeth as he snaps and barks at seconds and attendees—you wish it wasn’t so, you wish this good warrior hadn’t broken so irreparably that you would have to put him down like a sick animal. There is no muzzle able enough to prevent a man from biting the hand that feeds.

Turning eyes away from him, you cannot dwell on what must be done, you cannot think on how the only manner in which to know his sickness will not spread, is to set him to the pyre.

This council feels more profound than the others, more definitive—but it is ultimately the same. Plans, and theories, and hopes mean nothing against the mountain. They are gnat in the spring, always present, but easily overlooked.

Clarke fits in well with your bickering generals, her voice steady and her eyes sure, but she will learn in time that argument will do nothing but prolong a useless point. She will find her own authority, but for now Quint is determined to unseat her. While you are only just beginning to understand _relays_ and _power grids_ , many of your generals see the information as unnecessary. They live with their sword in hand, and anything in their way is to be cut in halves.

Explaining to an animal, how the trap around its leg works is wasted breath—the animal wishes for only two things. To be free, and to eat your throat out. It doesn’t matter if you are the one to release the beast from its painful confinement, those desires do not change—as they won’t in Quint. Some small young part of you had hoped still that he would be able to reign himself in, that he would find the man you had made general, and not the beast caught in the trap.

He does not. And it is clear that you must remove him earlier than thought. He is growing agitated, he is pressing against not only Clarke’s authority, but yours. Carefully removing the map of the mountain from the table, you let your eyes scan over it. Absent true consideration, “Quint’s right.” You see flickers of surprise in all those present—hurt in Clarke’s—but you need to remove those necessary from the gathering. “Waiting for Bellamy is not a plan, it’s a prayer. One that is not likely to be answered.”

As Clarke leaves, Quint doesn’t even wait to remove himself. Pressing your eyes closed, breathing out slowly through you nose, you curse that small childish shard of yourself that still wanted the best of people. That wanted to be proven wrong, even when you know you’ll be right.

“Come.” You speak to Narlon, your guard, and follow them slowly. You don’t stop to gather your armor, or anything larger than your father’s dagger.

If you’re to kill a man, it should be as close to a fair fight as possible.

* * *

The midday light sinks beyond the green caps of trees, allowing this makeshift prison to slip into natural shadow. You watch Clarke under the blue tint of light, as she grips and shakes bars, raging against a claustrophobia you can only imagine after a life in the clouds, pressed choicelessly into a coffin—regardless of that coffin’s view.

She is a tiger, if not in claw and tooth—in prowling captivity. The bars pressed into the blonde on her hair like a _tegher’s_ stripes, bold and black and forever present. Always looking at something just beyond her reach—in your mind that objective changes moment to moment. Freedom, and forgiveness, and peace, and quiet—most of all, the weight removed from tragic shoulders.

If you are both Atlas, does that make the heavens twice as easy to carry?

Or twice as heavy?

“You should have let me die.” You have no pride in how your voice doesn’t shake, this is who you are now— _heda_ , because Lexa is too complicated for even you to hold inside. “Now we’ll both die.”

Clarke shakes the bar particularly hard one last time—does she imagine it’s your neck? Why the thought almost makes you smile is for another time.

“Still new to your culture,” pressing her forehead against the bars, “but when someone save’s your life, my people say thank you.” It’s flippant, and distancing, and you can’t have that. She reminds you of Daxon so much that it hurts—how he’d snip and grip, and still save your life. Still exhale loudly through his nose with a, _is thank you so difficult, heda?_

You leverage your back against the support behind you, and get to your feet, not wanting to have this conversation with her so much taller. It may be pride, but half a leadership is understanding what others think they know about power—you don’t think this applies to Clarke, but you have had too much life of squaring your shoulders and steeling your spine to stop now.

“Why?” You know you saved her for reasons that you can, and cannot, say out loud—this sick, ailing thing of an alliance, the raw young power of the sky people—reckless in their groundside youth—the last desires of your dead mentor. But hidden between those perfect logical explanations are softer, crueler, ones you can’t even allow yourself to think of. The galaxies in her eyes, and the stardust in her hair, the thunderclouds in her anger and the refreshing sunlight of her smile.

Cruel, because these things make your _heart_ ache in ways you have forgotten. In ways you are unprepared for.

You can tolerate the twist of your hip, and the almost lame control of your leg, the socket taxed and stressed until it had simply given up its attempt at holding you up. You can pretend that your wounds hadn’t split open, raw and burning—the crimson of your blood seeping into the dark fabric of your clothes—commander’s wear black so that their generals can think they never bleed.

In the blue twilight of this prison, you know the red flecked against your neck and chin can be mistaken for dirt, and the way your weight leans against the metal support arrogant and unaffected.

“Why what?” She looks at you, her eyes night skies and curiosity, even as her jaw clenches in poorly managed fear—she’s scared, and it is so _new_ that you can only relish in the bravery of _feeling_.

“Why did you come back for me?” No question, just a statement—you can’t understand, or maybe you can, and you want to hear something beyond tactics and schemes. You want something human, even if you are barely that.

“Because I need you, Lexa.” Clarke says this with the exasperation of having to explain simple concepts to a child—or mercy to a monster. You watch her walk closer, can spot the discomfort in her step where she too had injured herself— she carries herself well. If you hadn’t been a body seer, you wouldn’t have noticed. Her words make your heart drum, loud and at the back of your throat where words should live—where your scoffing disagreement should find home.

“You may be heartless, but at least you’re smart.” It should hurt, her assessment of you, but there is the faintest desire to smile—tightening your lips so such a thing _doesn’t_ happen, you’re left simply watching her.

“Here’s to small virtues.” You say wryly, keeping your shoulders loose and your back set against the support. Clarke doesn’t seem the have the same reservations, her smile is small—barely there—but it feels like the first day of spring. Warming, in the cool blue of this cage.

“Let me take a look at that shoulder.” She has the arrogance of a leader, no question, because she is already moving as she speaks—fingers intent to prod and compel, and it is more instinct than logical thought that has you attempting to twist away. She can’t assess your shoulder as she wishes, but even as you take two steps away, your back turned, she’s been giving something else to assess.

“You’re bleeding.” It is different than when she first said it, less astonishment, less ache—but there is a epiphany behind it. She remembers your first meeting now—not as leader of the sky people, and commander of the twelve clans. But two wandering souls in the night. When your blood had coated her fingers, and you’d kept her safe from your scouts. “I forgot. All this time…” The healer in her is trying to look for the signs she missed. Daxon used to do the same when you’d hide something from him, he’d blame himself—and not your stubborn nature.

“The commander cannot be weak.” Even if it kills you. This is why commanders die young, because despite what you tell yourself—despite what you have to be—you are still human, and weakness is an inherent human trait. Pretending it didn’t exist was like breathing deep at the bottom of a lake—there may be oxygen, and the fish might be able to live. But you are no fish, and it is a fool’s errand to pretend otherwise.

“This isn’t about weakness, Lexa, this is about staying alive.” She’s on you, angry, or concerned, or some mixture of the two—her fingers digging into your elbow, forcing you to face her, and this close—trying to find the difference—she can see the wet fabric, even in the dark. “Were you just going to let yourself bleed to death? Is that a sign of strength to you people?”

“Bleeding to death is a bit of an exaggeration.” To unconsciousness, to numb weakness, to dizziness—sure. But death, that was just ridiculous. “It wasn’t even worth mentioning.”

Clarke makes something of a grunt, more a harsh exhale of breath while picking at buckles and clasps. You should stop her, you would stop anyone else, but you’re pliant and still under her efforts. Your minimal shoulder guard smacks tonelessly to the ground, and the dark fabric of your top pushed aside to reveal the red inflamed skin of your injury.

“Lexa!” She says your name harshly, splitting the urgent air she’s been cultivating—but you can only watch at how red her pale fingertips get when they press against the tender skin around the wound. Looking for infection, no doubt. “This isn’t nothing, this is serious. When did this happen?”

It had been long enough that you no longer chaff when the tissue is rubbed away, or when the pain races down your arm to your fingertips. Almost a full moon, you suppose, but you know without actually saying anything that Clarke won’t like the answer. And you’re in no particular mind to be sussed at.

You stony silence doesn’t seem to deter her in the least.

“You had this that night, I remember.” Softer touches, fingers acting like they could do more than displace the blood. You can see yesterday in her eyes—remembering of a time before choices, before life got heavier, and heavier, before Clarke realized stars were dying every day. Imploding upon themselves out in the vast nothing of space.

“It’ll heal.” All things physical do.

“Not if you keep this up,” Clarke’s palm is hot against the skin of your shoulder, soft and yet strong, kneading the tightening muscles while she presses fabric to your wound. Soaking up the weeping blood, trying to keep you together despite the fact that you had shattered long before she’d even set foot on the ground.

“Worried for me, Clarke of the sky people?” Your voice is too rough, warm with amusement, and you’re snared in the blue of her gaze as she finally looks up from where she is binding your arm to your chest. Her breath is fogging only slightly in the chill, but it’s warm against your chin as her hands seem to settle on the unassuming curve of your shoulder.

“God help us if any of your generals becomes commander because you decided to die from blood loss.” Is her voice breathy? Cinching your brow slightly, you are beginning to sway forward—just a hint of dizziness to blame—before you catch yourself and remain firm. You don’t push her away, you let her exist inside your space comfortably—without combat or confrontation.

“Don’t worry,” you don’t know if she can hear the hard hammer of your heart, a shameful drum in your ears that you are unable to ignore. If she does, she makes no sign of it. “My spirit will choose much more wisely than that.”

The, “your spirit?” that is exhaled against your cheeks makes you look down again, from where you had inadvertently begun gazing over her shoulder.

“When I die, my spirit will find the next commander.” As foreign as they are, sometimes you forget that they are children in your world—that they don’t understand the imaginary lines drawn in the dirt, the seasons of blood soaked into the very trees.

“Reincarnation.” A word you aren’t familiar with, “That’s how you became commander.” One that you know would fall clumsily from your own tongue. It feels like an explanation, though—a definition—of a continued spirit, of many lives.

You miss her inherent warmth when she stoops down to find your shoulder guard, holding it between her hands with an uncertainty you are ensnared by almost as readily as her eyes. You need only one hand to settle it on your shoulder once pulling it form her fingers, the weight sitting uncomfortably but familiar on your wound.

You’re about to say something when the _pauna_ rages just outside the door—your secondary sword bending under the weight, creaking and threatening to shatter. Fear untangles itself from the vines around your heart, pumping liberally through your blood. But you refuse to die here, you refuse to clamber into your grave cowardly. Your steadier hand plucks your father’s wooden handled blade from your waist, inverting the grip and settling into an even stance. “Death is not the end, Clarke.” It is what you tell yourself to keep that crawling uncertainty away—that ages from now you will be remembered, you will exist in the soul of some commander generations to come.

“We are not dying here,” the tremor is her voice is too human, too afraid, and you _ache_ —because it is never a _we_ with you. You always live, you are always who is left alive when the blood and bodies settle into the dirt. Clarke—she has only just begun seeing what she is capable of, she has only just begun her existence as the one left behind. “I need your spirit to stay right where it is.”

You should know not to underestimate Clarke Griffin.

* * *

 

She sleeps with peace. It is stranger than any of her other traits, because on the ground only children who had yet to fear the world sleep so fitlessly. It hadn’t taken much to coax her to sleep, you could see the weight in her limbs, the hollow depth of her eyes—she staggered at your side wordlessly, but you were not here to drag her through the wood. In the dark it had been too easy to slip into low whispers, as if your voice would shatter the silence of the dark. _Sleep_ , you’d soothed, quietly watching her owlish blinks and the way she clutched at her empty weapon. A measure of safety, even if it was false. _I’ll take guard_.

“Just an hour,” she’d promised while laying down on her side facing away from you, one arm curled up under her head. “Just an hour, and then we’ll head back.” There is some effort of authority, but you are not her to command, even if she seems to think otherwise. Her useless gun tucked close to her chest, and it would have been dangerous had it been loaded, but you let her curl around it in the dark. Her breathing evening out only moments later—long inhales, and slow, even exhales.

You’re tired, you haven’t slept in days either, but the sleeplessness sits on your bones like a vibration, keeping you awake. An internal buzz that won’t let your eyes close, at least not now. Your dagger sits tip first against your thigh, and you can feel the pin prick of where blood welled and skin split. Just another sensation in your periphery.

Your ghosts settle around, quiet and whole, the meager light of the fire not touching them. You don’t tremble at their appearance anymore, you don’t fear their message, and they are as much a part of you as your heartbeat or your physical ache. They live inside you are warning klaxons and past yesterdays. What might’ve been if something had changed, if something had been different—but you can’t live in those yesterdays anymore, not when you’re looking toward tomorrows.

Tipping your head back against the tree you look skyward, looking for stars you recognize—the ones that were the protagonist’s in Enrik’s stories, or Costia’s dreams. They’ve seemed so foreign since they had died, like the sky you look at now is one that had never existed before. You wonder how many have fallen in your life, how many had simply tumbled out of the sky without anyone noticing. Without anyone mourning their loss in the dead of night.

It takes most of the night, the barest hints of morning just touching the horizon—the sun asking the moon to slip away and go to sleep—but you begin to see the familiar patterns. There’s Lorida, the huntress who had wrapped fingers around the pillars of fire and thrown them into the great water. There’s Leston, the great bear who had slept through the end of days, his body larger than a mountain blocking the entrance to the cave where all humans had hidden until it was safe to brave the world again. There’s Ork, the cruel spirit that sang in the dreams of great warriors, asking them so kindly to fall upon their blade—promising things beyond this world. To give loved ones back, to end wars and save villages.

You must not have looked hard enough the last seasons, because they sit there in the velvet black where they always have been. Bright and settled. Looking lower, you find Enrik in the dark, searching for the muddy warmth of his eyes, but being unable to. He sits shoulder to shoulder with Costia, and it looks so strange that these two people who had been your whole word had never met—that they had existed beside each other, and had never known the other existed.

“I thought they were gone.” Barely words, lost in the song of cicadas, unwilling to wake Clarke with your peaceful madness.

“Stars are forever,” he says, lifting broad shoulders with a careless shrug.

Scoffing, you can’t stop the roll of your eyes, “nothing is forever.”

“Love is.” Simple, he says it like it is indisputable. Like you haven’t lived through just how temporary it can be—but hidden away in the gravestones in your heart, you still love them all. Desperately, painfully, senselessly. That hadn’t stopped when they took their last breath, that hadn’t ceased because you had been criminal is living on without them.

Turning your eyes back toward the sky without answering, you know the moment they dissipate into the morning. You know they wash away with the sunlight splashing through the tree tops.

Sometimes the worst thing you can do is love someone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Follow me on tumblr @ **civilorange** and feel free to leave me asks. I fixed my inbox, which I didn't know was broke!


	16. you're drowning, dying inside

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When you’d been a girl, standing at the edge of the great water, looking out and having to squint to see the massive ship. It was magnificent, sails broad and strong, the wind sitting snug in the curve of fabric. Your father had raised his hand to shadow his green eyes and whistled. “I wanted to be a sailor once,” he said it wistfully, like some part of him was still a boy that wished to set out into the great water.
> 
> “Why didn’t you?” You had asked while gaping at the boat—the ship your father had corrected. The caravan sat high up on the cliff face, the guard lurking in the shadow of the carts, taking a brake while you ogled the distant silhouette.
> 
> “You can forget how to be a man, out on the water,” that had made you turn to him with wide eyes and a pinched expression. “Nothing seems real out there.” It hadn’t made sense to you then, because you hadn’t understood how misconstrued something could become in the distance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaand Sixteen, only three or four chapters left. I managed to delete the whole first draft of this chapter, and it was lost forever. I had to give myself a day after that happened to accept the horrible thing I had just done. Some part of it I feel like came out better, others I don't know how I feel about. But, anywho, we all knew this was coming. This horrible choice that sits heavily on our ladies, even if sometimes they want people to think otherwise. Blood that will never leave them.
> 
> As usual, I can't spell or write. 8) Forgive me.

You feel it like dread curling across your shoulders, an armor you never asked for. This knowledge that horror and grief follows you like the stars chasing the sun toward the horizon—an inevitable end, a knowing fall. This weightless burden settling comfortably into the cracks in your bones, filling in all the fissures and chips. You saw it in her eyes, the shadows crossing across the sky blue like storm clouds, full to the brim with thunder. An unseasonable downpour. You saw it in the dangerous clench of her jaw, all the things she was just barely keeping inside—Clarke is similar, yes, but she isn’t the same breed of monster as you. She is a bright mark in the gray ash of the world, she is the sure shouldered leader, the heart broken healer.

Passing your _jusbrotas_ you only spare them a look that keeps them posted at the entrance of the war room, their bright animal eyes intelligent and assured. Turning to look into the dark below, you watch how your shadows stretch and claw, elongating until they are unrecognizable as human at all—just thin skeletal horrors etched into the concrete of the ground.

It is cooler down here, balmy and crisp, and you loosen your shoulders, feeling comfort in the ache of your wound. Wrapped tight and properly by Clarke not long ago—the sky princess had seen fit to scold you for your reckless abandon. You’d been surprisingly amiable to the words. That should have been the first of many clues that you were doomed. That you had reached the end of some hall and had nowhere else to turn but the inevitable.

You haven’t even turned before Clarke is speaking, “They’re firing a missile.” Out of breathe like she had run this whole way, like the fear and panic are stealing her very breath. You fell your own lungs clench, the air hissing out of your nostrils as you clench your jaw to keep your words inside. Just for the moment. Turning around, you don’t expect her to be standing so close, her eyes wider than they should be—the unease lingering in her blue eyes even if her face has settled into something resembling resolve.

“A missile, you’re sure?” You have heard stories of the ruin they can cause—the craters left behind—the legends told. Of mountain men weapons and reaper raids. The child inside you still balks at having touched the Mountain Men’s rifle so casually. That small five summer old child rolls in uncertainty—had you done this? But you’re too old now to worry about old wives’ tales, of the ridiculous falsehoods that spread like disease through your people.

“Yes,” she exhales the affirmative as if it has been trapped inside her this whole while, “We have to start evacuating now.” And that dread consumes you whole, it slurps up your blood and digs teeth into the meat on your bones. Looking at her, she is asking you now for mercy—again. Clarke asks with her eyes what she hasn’t said with her lips— _don’t do it_. One of the last vibrant and red parts of your heart crumbles, the life that lived there sold to fate once more. Another loan taken against the tomorrow of your people.

“No.” Two letters, how could they be so hard to say?

Clarke balks, “What do you mean _no_ , Lexa?”

You don’t want her to ever say your name different than she does now, “If we evacuate now, they’ll know we have a spy inside their walls.” You have to be pragmatic, you have to be cold stone and dark nights. This is why you had been chosen, this ability to compartmentalize—to cease being _Lexa_ , no matter how you craze how Clarke says your name. You are _heda_ , you will always be _heda_.

“Not necessarily,” Clarke says with desperation.

“We can’t risk it.”

“What’s the point of having an inside man if we can’t act on what he tells us?” If only it was that simple, if only you could save this village because for once you knew the destruction was coming. If only you could spirit these lives away into the woods and keep them safe in the dark. But you belonged to more than this one village, this one clan, this one _girl_ —you belonged to all, and you couldn’t throw away advantages on _wishes_ and _desires_.

Your teeth grit, “Is the acid fog disabled? Is our sleeping army uncaged?” As if these point will remove the horror from Clarke’s face, as if you could feel any less the monster with reasons to explain how you could chalk these losses up to simply pragmatism. “Then Bellamy’s job is not done. Without him, we can’t win this war.” Turning away from her, you can’t bear to see the moment her eyes harden, the moment she realizes just how rotten your insides are. How horrible the sludge in your veins is.

“So what are you saying?” Clarke is chasing into your space again, only a few hand lengths away from your shoulder, her hands clenching at her sides—you can see how her dirty fingernails dig into the meat of her palm. “We just do nothing? Let them bomb us?”

 _We_. _Us_. You don’t know how to weigh how Clarke uses these terms—only a handful of _skaikru_ are present in _Tondisi_. An amount that pales in comparison to your people—this is where you tremble apart and crumble. Clarke is so ready for _us_ and _we_ , but you have dedicated your life to your people. They are dug into the ink on your skin, and the scars riddling your body. They are inside you in ways that the sky can’t _understand_.

The map of the mountain is mocking you from the table top, the slate gray does no justice to the horror of the mountain. The things they are capable of—the _thousands_ they have killed. The _thousands_ more they will kill if left unattended. You have never dreamed of having someone inside the mountain, someone who could shatter their fog and take back those who had been stolen.

“It’ll be a blow,” a _blow_ , like you had stumbled and fallen, scratched your knee and seen the sluggish blood thereafter. No, this was callous and wrong, but necessary. You can only be _heda_ now, because _Lexa_ would forsake the consequences—would burst from this moment and shepherd as many villagers as possible into the woods. “But our army will be safe inside the woods.”

You’re drowning, dying inside, the small living parts of you that have survived this long. “It will inspire them.”

Turning, you throw a shawl at her, your body rebelling against this retreat but you have always come out on top of these internal wars. Clarke catches the fabric, and it is gripped tightly between her hands, “Lexa, _wait_.” Her voices cracks, and it is the only thing that could make you look at her. To seek out her eyes, to find the graveyard that is trying desperately to match your own. Her lips tremble, her hands jesticulate inarticulately. “You don’t _understand_.” Like you’re the one who is being irrational, like _you’re_ being the emotional one.

“What don’t I understand?”

“I provoked them,” a broken dam, leaking only ounces of water at first, until the pressure built and built and shattered the whole barrier. Everything she feels pours into her words, drowning syllables in guilt and shame, in realization and ruin. “I sent a message to distract them from Bellamy.” Clarke blames herself, she holds this weight on her shoulders alone because she believed herself responsible for the actions of mad men.

“This isn’t your doing, Clarke.” Dipping your chin to keep your eyes settled on hers, to keep her attention on your, even as you step closer, voice lowering. “You are not responsible for their actions.” She doesn’t deserve blame for this, but she cannot falter, she cannot allow herself to box herself away from what needs to be done. It will do no one any good.

Nodding briskly, you turn to leave, the shawl clutched desperately in your hand; her footsteps echo your own, but she stops at the bottom of the steps.

“We have to cancel the meeting. Start a fire. Something!” Her voice pitches into the dark, echoing off the walls.

Gritting your teeth, “Clarke, we don’t have time for this.” That hurricane in your chest is growing, howling winds and horrible thunder.

“No,” for the first time since she sought you out, her voice is firm, louder and stronger. “No! This is _wrong_.” Her fingers grab your around the arm, and turn you to face her—and rational thought bleeds away into the gale winds of that storm in your heart. You don’t see sun golden hair, or galaxy blue eyes; you see shadows and haunts.

Your face empties, eyes green glass and lips turning into an animal’s sneer as you step closer, fingers cracking into a fist. It isn’t until you see the first fractures of fear in her face that you still, that you realize this is _Clarke_ and she isn’t someone you must dismantle with your hands alone. Breathing harshly through your nose, you wait a moment before carefully removing her hand from your arm. Holding her soft fingers longer than necessary in your grasp.

This is _Clarke_ , but you are out of time. “It is also our only choice, and you are aware of that.” That had been what you saw upstairs, that is what you had inhaled like noxious fumes. Festering, marring desperation. “You could have warned everyone, but you didn’t. You said nothing, not even to your own people.” Your voice is slow, and quiet, hitting the syllables hard and there can be no mincing of words now. You want to tell her she isn’t a monster, she just cares too damned much—that her heart guides her, but it also shames her. Love, and loyalty, and passion.

“This is war, Clarke.” This had been one of your first lessons; the only one that remains true, no matter how long you live. “People die.” People you love, people you know, people who depend on you. And sometimes, it is people you don’t know, but you had held their lives in your hands and decided they were an acceptable loss.

“It’s time to go.”

* * *

 

It seems almost fictional this far away. Like when you’d been a girl, standing at the edge of the great water, looking out and having to squint to see the massive ship. It was magnificent, ails broad and strong, the wind sitting snug in the curve of fabric. Your father had raised his hand to shadow his green eyes and whistle. “I wanted to be a sailor once,” he said it wistfully, like some part of him was still a boy that wished to set out into the great water.

“Why didn’t you?” You had asked while gaping at the boat—the _ship_ your father had corrected. The caravan sat high up on the cliff face, the guard lurking in the shadow of the carts, taking a brake while you ogled the distant silhouette.

“You can forget how to be a man, out on the water,” that had made you turn to him with wide eyes and a pinched expression. “Nothing seems real out there.” It hadn’t made sense to you then, because you hadn’t understood how misconstrued something could become in the distance. In the larger numbers. How you could cloud the truth with a different angle.

 _Tondisi_ was just a smudged mark against the lightening backdrop of morning, a lazy billow of smoke drifting off into nothing. It certainly didn’t look like hell on earth from here, it didn’t look like the last compromise you could balance against your humanity. It was just a far off reality that was smoothed at the edges by distance.

You imagine that is what your father had meant. Out on the water, with the shore only visible to those who squinted hard to find it, with society leagues away—with nothing true and real to keep them men. With only the salt in the air, and the wind in their eyes. Consequences seem so inconsequential from such a distance, with no one to hold them accountable for their monstrous behavior.

Turning, you follow Clarke and Lincoln’s backs up the incline, not realizing how tightly you were gripping your sword’s hilt. Not realizing how cold your blood became, how your thoughts slowed and quieted. So much was possible in those empty places. So much gray nothing that allowed you to drift in the numb for a little while, so that you don’t chew and gnaw at the reality of what you had done.

Everything is a muffled heartbeat of sound—the ringing gunshot, the bruised blue of Clarke’s eyes as she unloads rounds into the far wood, the determined tip of Lincoln’s chin. So much can happen in only moments, so many truths questions and affirmed. Clarke returns to your side, breathing heavily in a way that has nothing to do with physical exertion.

What does she think when she looks down the barrel of her weapon? Does she look for the whites of her enemies’ eyes? Does she focus on the blade in his hand? In the conviction in Lincoln’s words? “You are my people,” and this is how you know how _Tondisi_ hurts for her. They are not her people, not truly, but the pain in her heart sees no difference. Clarke holds them close, knowing full well that keeping them inside her was like hugging razor blades.

 _Pop_. And a man dies.

“Did that make you feel better?” Now it is your turn for your voice to crack, hoarse over the inquiry, so much trying to burst out of your chest, to reach out to her, to make her understand how important this moment was. This was not the desperate blaze of fire that had killed three hundred of your warriors, this was not the omission of truth that had damned so many in _Tondisi_. This was willful killing, this was some line in the dirt you had stepped over ages ago, but Clarke was considering for the first time.

The tears are caught in her throat, “No.” And you don’t realize the breath you release, the long exhale that allows your spirit to settle back onto your person. The moment death stop bothering you is the moment you are beyond help, beyond redemption. You want to tell her the ache she feels is such an important thing, that she needs to hold that close and feel this moment everyday she questions her humanity.

Looking at the body slumped motionless on the ground, you can’t find it in you to care—he’s dead, and so are so many of your people. This is war, and people die. Jaw clenching while turning to look at the smoke in the distance, _Tondisi_ lost beyond the crest. 

* * *

You spend the whole night sifting through rubble

Unearthing mangled twisted bodies from beneath fallen walls and downed trees. Their skin cold and blue, burned away in some places from the fires that still rage on. Their weight becomes too familiar as you cradle them to your chest, only relinquishing your hold when their families converge on you to take the burdened weight of death.

They _thank you_. They look at you with sad reverence, and press their dirty, sweaty foreheads to the ground in praise— _machof, heda_. It leaves a sour pungent taste on your tongue that you can’t relieve yourself of. No matter how any times you swallow, no matter how many tight nods you bestow on them.

Even when the people you unearth are alive, there is no relief—they are bruised, and damaged, and so scared. This night will live with them forever, much in the same way it will you—but they had no choice. They were the unknowing sacrifice, there were the currency you gave to the cosmic tilt of the world for some elusive _tomorrow_.

You keep a tally in your mind, and it doesn’t take long until the dead weigh down on you impossibly heavy.

You don’t realize you are looking for someone in particular until you see her—no one pays her any mind as she twists through the gaps between them. Ducking under the liberated wooden supports and large pieces of stone. Her clothing is white and stark against the night, small hands wringing together in front of her, and you can understand this _need_ to move. To do _something_.

You can’t go to her, because you’re holding a small boy whose lungs rattle with each breath he takes. He’s pressed into your side, his small hand curled into the strap keeping your shoulder guard in place. His hair is soft and downy between your fingers as you absently card your fingers through it. When you’d gotten him free, there had been no one to claim him, no one to coax him through the wet, hissing coughs that wracked his small body.

“Alrik!” You don’t pay attention, but the boy comes to life in your arms, scrambling away from you in half-jointed steps and into the chest of the man who swallowed him with massive scarred arms. Clutching the boy more gently than you’ve seen a warrior do anything. He is softened, even against the backdrop of smoldering ruin and fiery destruction. You catch the warrior’s eyes as you stand up, much more sedately than the boy, raising two fingers in answer when the boy—Alrik—waves enthusiastically from within his father’s arms.

Sonian is standing motionlessly, watching you with haunting eyes, her brow tucked in distress, confusion painted like bright colors across her face. She looks like she isn’t quite sure what is happening. Like the fires and smoke had simply filtered into existence when she wasn’t looking.

You notice that her brother is nowhere in sight, and something inside you shudders, something doesn’t want to add another body to the pile in your soul—one with a name, one with a face you’d known before it was maimed by rubble and fire.

“ _Heda_ ,” she’s getting louder, she’s stumbling along at your side, trying to catch the fabric of your sleeve—but little legs can’t keep up with a determined commander. “ _Heda_ , where’s _bro_?” There’s a crack, afraid and worried, like her world was getting smaller, and she didn’t like the feeling of walls on all sides. It is the first time she realizes that life isn’t open fields and vast forests—its small rooms that smell like death, and the smoke of funeral pyres.

“We’ll find him.” Alive or dead, you don’t promise. Looking back at her, you see how she skips over the shattered sides of ruined buildings—the residential district had been hit hard, it had been hit truly. Her blue eyes dark in the night, her small limbs hindered by her sleeping clothes—she’d already been in bed when everything had erupted.

“We’re going the _wrong way_.” She’s insistent, her little hands grabbing for you every time you shift out of her reach. You are heading toward the places where the buildings get thicker, where the streets are narrower and the families larger.

Where the most dead would be.

Your shawl is still around your neck, still hiding most of your lower jaw, but you’ve pulled it off your head. Your hands are already sore from moving stone, your arms scratched from where the dying had tried to hold onto life. Tried to tether themselves to you—don’t they know you’re death? Don’t they know they should be pushing you away?

“ _Heda_ is responsible for all.” You can hear the clench of your jaw in your words, but the small girl in none-the-wiser. Squinting at you with impossibly bright eyes, standing on a particularly imbalanced pile of rubble. Turning to watch her for only a moment, you almost lose the ability to breath. She stands amongst the ruin, whole and barely touched, but there is such _destruction_. The air thick with smoke, the scent of burning foliage and burning flesh equal in your nose.

You had done this.

Sonian watches you like she’s trying to understand the vacantly searching look in your eyes, but she’s too young.

You had taken the choice away from every person in this village, you had stolen their voice, and decided they were an acceptable loss. That your war would not perish, would not falter, if you allowed them to burn. What did that make you? The graveyard in your soul was filling quicker by the day, three hundred fresh fatalities added to the price against your life. Three hundred new graves fresh, their phantom scent shard in your nostrils.

Relief from your thoughts comes in the form of Indra; the general’s posture all wrong, her movements terse and pained, but she seems to ignore all that in favor of using her weight to balance a large slab of stone off a half caved in hut. The tremors that riddle her limbs seems to do nothing to slow her down, seems to not even register, and it isn’t the first—or last time—you wish you had her conviction.

Pushing forward to settle against the rubble just beside Indra, you lodge your shoulder under the weight and push upward—your muscles protest, but the physical pain it leagues better than the bloodbath that has become your mind. How death fills your nostrils and settles like stones in your soul.

Indra watches you, her face slick with sweat and blood, just as your own surely is. Breathing slow—in, out, in, out—and with a short, sharp nod you both push upward and lock into place. By now warriors and artisans alike are filling in the spots around you, and the weight is becoming easier to bear. This is what it feel like to be able to share the weight—to be able to settle it onto a dozen different shoulders and not struggle alone.

They can’t help you with the real weight on your shoulders.

No one can.

It feel like an eternity before the last person is pulled from the wreckage, before you’re able to bend your knees and let the stone rest back on the pile.

Your bones are tired, and you’re envious of Sonian’s energy as she still seems to flit between smoldering rubble without hitch or breath. It’s been hours, and she hasn’t turned away, she hasn’t complained. Her eyes would linger on young warriors who bore a resemblance to Washon, trying to find him in the crowd. You’d finally made it to the edge of town, to where the crumbling houses are barely discernable from the rubble around them.

Fire licks across your features, lighting your way better than any torch—everything seems settled into ruin here. The fires haven’t been tamed, and the sound of crying families are louder because they’ve been left alone with their sadness. They’re huddled in the streets, tending to their wounded and you’re so proud of them—you stop for only seconds because each one ushers you to the next. _They need you more, heda_ or _they’re hurt worse, heda_.

These are your people.

They deserve better than you.

Turning around, you try to find Sonian, the girl had been at your heels all night—for better or worse. She’s nowhere in sight. Searching the dark between the fires, you can’t spot her. But this close to her home, she must have finally submitted to her need to find her brother. Turning, you follow the path you had once before only days earlier.

The trees are demolished, the walls caved in, and there is Washon.

Blood stains the tan of his face, it slicks the dark of his hair, and he’s slumped motionlessly against the side of what had once been his home. He looks too young to be that still—to be that bloody. His clothes are ripped and gashes from debris show through.

But that isn’t what holds your attention.

It is what he hold in his blood stained arms.

Not what— _who._

She looks like she could have been asleep, her night dress more red than white, her face mangled from heavy rocks and careless weight. You can see that Washon hadn’t been able to wait for help in lifting whatever had crushed his little sister—he’d dragged, and pushed, and squeezed her out. Leaving very little to remain.

“ _Strik sis_ ,” he is whispering over and over, his voice cracking and wet, his eyes squeezed shut. He isn’t holding her tightly, and you can tell her bones are shattered—limbs slumping oddly against the ground.

Turning away from him, you set eyes on the girl who’d been following you all night—a ghost who hadn’t been able to stop herself from seeking you out—her murderer. She stands there now in her bloody dress, her arms hanging uselessly at her sides, and her half-open lips mangled by the shattered bones in her cheeks.

“I died.” A lost little spirit who hadn’t been able to find her brother in the afterlife—because he was still alive. Blinking, she turns to you, looking for an answer that doesn’t exist. You can’t tell this child that you had killed her for your people—for _her_ people. You can’t tell this boy that his sister was dead because tomorrow would be so much better.

“Why did I die, _heda_?” She’s scared again, like she can’t find her brother all over again. You can rally the troops with misinformation, you can spin this into something to burn the blood and ignite the air. But you can’t mince words with this dead girl, her blood vessel popped eyes regarding you with tears that will never fall. Because she’s dead—and you killed her.

“I had to choose.” Today, or tomorrow. Victory stands of the back of sacrifice. “And it wasn’t you.”

Why did tomorrow feel so far away?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Follow me on tumblr @ **civilorange**. So, I've been writing a few more Clexa things; the sequel to this, a modern alt-verse thing, and a few prompts. Feel free to send me more, anything you want; I've been in a particular writing mood, and am flopping inconsistently between the previously mentioned.


	17. you are the ground, and she is the sky

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What had Arling thought of when he’d walked off to war? What plagued his thoughts in the silence preceding battle? Did he doubt himself? Did he think of all those that would be lost, and decide that in the end it wasn’t worth it? Did regret and sadness sit in his stomach like a sour taste? Ash on the back of his tongue making it impossible to swallow the acidity away. 
> 
> Did he look through the boys and girls around him and know that they would die for him? The eager loyalty in their eyes, the vitality in their limbs—did he push those images aside to imagine what they would look like still and bloody? All life drained away like rain through the branches. How heavy was his heart on the day he died? His second cradling his mangles face in her small child-like hands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dun, dun, duuun! Chapter seventeen. Kind of a transition chapter into the last stretch of season two; next chapter will be the last chapter with anything canon. After that we're gonna slip into the plot that'll take us to the next stretch of this nonsense I call a story. Three more chapters to go. Thank you so much everyone for sticking around for my word-doodling, it means the world to me. All your comments just make my day; I know I tell you, but I mean it so ridiculously much.
> 
> As usual, my grammar/spelling/english is horrible. I'll fix it when I take some time and get fresh eyes, to read through it again.
> 
> Love, love to all!

Patience was the greatest lesson you have ever learned. Leaving the brash recklessness of youth behind in favor of milling silence and ordered stillness. You can hear the restless rustle of your army—a warrior for every star in the sky. The largest even gathered. Sitting just outside the border of where the poison aid lingers. The flicker of light lashing against the hoisted sides of your tent. Even your generals have stepped away in favor of rest, their eyes quiet in the way predators get at night. Stalking, waiting—patient.

Your bones are weary, and your muscles ache—you have sidestepped sleep too often these last few nights. Your chest tightening at the thought of what would greet you when your eye closed. You had been thinking too wholly about this war—about this coming battle—that you hadn’t truly stopped to tally your dead. They chase you through the afternoons, but when the sun slips into sleep, they seem to as well.

Armor removed, weapons away, you lay back into the cradle of blankets and fur—the first chill is lingering in the air. The first frosted breath of the season—autumn nears. And soon after that, winter would be upon your people.

Closing your eyes, you allow your mind to fall into emptiness, to linger in the dark without intent. It has been churning for as long as you remember—gambling, and scheming. There is nothing left to consider, nothing left that you could rectify with plans and forethought.

“What if we’re wrong?” Clarke doesn’t share your desire for quiet rest, “What if cutting the power doesn’t disengage the locks?”

You can hear the gears in her mind turning, each scenario worse than the last. You can taste how she recites names you don’t recognize—her people lost within the mountain. She is agitated, and restless, looking for things to occupy her time. These listless moments between actions. While you have grown to cherish them, she dread the time to think about everything that could go wrong.

“Your people say it will.” Drawling, eyes still closed, you know now why Anya had always seemed amused by your frantic energy—the need to layer plan, over plan, over plan. Youth is not always age, it is experience—she is fresh to the dragging, cloying weight of leadership. To the inevitability of somethings. To the impossible, and the unplanned. “You should rest, Clarke.”

Clarke looks down at the map like it will tell her something new, “We could blow the doors manually.”

Exhaling through your nose, and shrugging the sluggishness off your shoulders as you stand, “Plans don’t last very long in battle.” They are a foot hold, a beginning. There is no plan in war, there is only best case scenarios—which never happen. “Tiring yourself out with questions you already have answers to is waste.”

How many night did you lose sleep over what could happen? Over the lives that you were willingly putting on the line, so that some fictitious future could _maybe_ happen. A dreamer.

“People died for this,” and they weigh on her, a noose around her slender pale throat, dragging her into the ground where her dead rumble restlessly. “It has to work.”

“This is war, Clarke.” The dark has stolen your voice, making it quiet, a rasp of air, “You’re doing what I did when I first took command. You can’t move forward, and you have far too much time to think.” Of the worst case scenarios, of the widows and orphans your dream will make.

“Once Bellamy shuts down the acid fog and the battle begins, everything will be clear.” There will be no time for overthinking, there will just be movement, and action. The physicality you’ve always held inside you.

“What if he can’t?” The fear in her voice makes you turn away, you don’t wish to see it as well. “What if it is too dangerous, and I sent him in there anyway?” Pouring the wine that one of your generals had left into a tanker, you can only think of Anya—of the mission you had sent her on. The mission that had cost her everything.

“It is a disservice to doubt him now,” you say, tipping back some wine, thinking on the specter of a boy who glowered expectantly from behind Clarke’s shoulder. You’d recognized a kinship with him when you’d first laid eyes on him, his tense frame holding violence inside, his dark eyes promising much the same. No, you would not leave him in command of your army—not for loyalty, or doubt, but because under his anger, and hate, and hurt—he is tender. He loves harshly, and wholly, and that will be his downfall.

A wolf is only as cruel as its greatest love.

“You care about him.” As if this is a revelation, as if this is something you’re just considering—it isn’t true, but it shifts where Clarke has settled in your mind. It is why Clarke is who your people accept as leader of the sky people—she loves, she cares, but that is only so much of her loyal, hurting heart.

“I care about all of them.” Its tongue in cheek, it’s almost dismissive.

You don’t doubt the truth of it, you are not blind. You see how their captivity sits like shackles around her wrists, how their pain thrums through her veins—how she would take it upon herself if it would give them reprieve. “Yet you worry about him more.”

“He was there, Lexa.” Why does it seem so important to her that you understand? “I couldn’t have kept us alive without him; even when he wasn’t…even when we didn’t get along, he did his best. He always did.” She respects him, she cherishes him—something cold and foreign lingers at the edges of your heart, veins of ice slipping into your blood. She looks at you with beseeching blue eyes, night skies and meteor showers. “We need him. And now I might be the one who gets him killed.”

You would never wish that pain upon her; it is the worse ache that fills you. Knowing how someone you loves looks like, as you kill them. They never blame you, they never curse your name. They love you.

And that hurts worse.

“That’s what it means to be a leader, Clarke.” Your cup is places on the war table, and your hands finds itself settled just beside her own. You can feel the heat of her skin, but you dare not shift that scrap of centimeters. “We must look into the eyes of our warriors, and say _go die for me_.” How many have you killed in this crusade against the world?

A few hundred? A few thousand?

Her lips pinch, nostrils flare, “It isn’t that simple.” The firm line of her shoulders sag, and Clarke looks back to the diagram of the mountains interior. “Can we please go back to the plan?”

If it would help her, you would—in a breath—but she haunts her own mind now, and will give herself no reprieve.

“No,” simple, firm.

“You could be the leader your people look to.” Brave, and hopeful, and dangerous. Anya must have seen shards of Arling in Clarke. In the determination strengthening her shoulders, and the hope living in her eyes. “The person they pour their hopes and dreams into. Someone they would be honored to fight, and die, for.”

Having that kind of influence had never sat right with you.

Clarke’s eyebrows dip with sadness, a mist lifting from the corners of her eyes—they won’t fall, you know this already. But if you were foolishly brave, you’d bring her into your arms. She is breaking, right before your eyes, even if she refuses to admit it. Even if she ignored the cracks splintering through her.

“I never asked for this.” Voice thick with such sorrow, “I’m just trying to keep us alive.”

Your fingers do find her shoulder then, the fabric rough against your fingertips, her shoulders quaking ever so slightly. She doesn’t realize how strong she is. “You were born for this, Clarke.”

Does an expiration date hang above her head as well?

“Same as me.”

* * *

“You sent for me?” Trepidation, hesitancy, but still burning bright inside—this is the same girl who had the presence of self to chase into your space.

“Yes.” Breathing in deeply through your nose, you put the words together in your mind. Sentences that don’t start with _I’m sorry_ , and _you’re right_. Because she isn’t. She is idealistic, and hopeful, and has so much _faith_. You’ve had all those things bled from your very veins, you’d lost them in the swamps, or the mountains, or maybe _Tondisi_. You can’t put your finger on when exactly you’d started expecting the worst—maybe always. Maybe that had been why Anya had called you broken when you’d still only been a child.

“Octavia has nothing to fear from me.” You will give her this, you will allow her belief, and when everything shatters, you will do as you always do. Pick up the needed pieces, and move forward. Continue on.

Clarke steps closer to you, and you look up to catch her gaze. Her features have soften from when you’d last looked upon them. The slightest smile on her lips, a glint in her eyes. “I know how hard that is for you.” She sounds so _sincere_ that it hurt you—it is warm and soothing inside a chest that can no longer recognize those things.

She can’t possibly know what you are forsaking for her foolish idealism. She can’t understand the whispers you ignore in favor of this existence colored in shades other than gray and red. In something more than the cold of ice, and the dark of shadows; more than the hot red of blood.

“You think our ways are harsh,” you don’t know why you want her to understand; is it to truly explain your people? Or yourself? Do you need this veil of reason to lay over all your harshest characteristics? To soften the truth of _what_ you are? “But that’s how we survive.”

Survive.

It’s almost like living. But harder.

“Maybe life should be more than just surviving,” if only, if only.

“Don’t we deserve better than that?” She does—Clarke embodies everything you wish to keep unscathed. She is capable, so very capable, but the pain lingers in her eyes like a wound, it sits in her soul like festering rot that she is too aware of. Killing still _hurts_ her. It plagues her heart and gnaws away at her soul. She makes these choices not because she wants to, not because people ask her to—but because she wants to keep that pain from her people. She wishes to shoulder it alone.

You want to bear that burden with her—no, _for her_. You would have sacrificed _Tondisi_ on your own had you been able. You are a monster, a ruined broken thing that surely had no more soul left to sell. A merchant with nothing left to auction off to the highest bidder. And when you had run low, what had you done? You’d sold those foolish enough to love you—blind enough to forget your catching edges and all the empty places inside.

But she says _deserve better_ with such whimsy. Such hope.

You want to pretend with her for a moment.

You want to be _Lexa_ —and not the demon you’ve become.

“Maybe we do.” You’re drowning, cast out into the great water with nothing to hold you above the waves. You are a sparrow, a wolf, a conqueror—but those are worthless titles in the blue that stretches so far it kisses the horizon. You can feel your heartbeat on the back of your tongue, heavy and metallic, louder than it has ever been before. _Maybe we do_. Every scarred, and inked, and calloused part of you wants to dismiss these words—you should know better, you have learned your lessons in blood, and smoke, and suffering. It is etched deeper into you than your name—it is what you are, it is what will never change.

But Clarke makes you question that. With her eyes bright with something like hope, her lips drawn open like a well favored bow. You want to draw the rough pad of your thumb across her bottom lip, to feel her breath against your knuckles. You want to see her eyes darken in something other than pain, something other than loss. You can’t imagine what a look like that would appear as. How it would flush her cheeks and steal her breath.

 _Want_. You had thought yourself incapable of wants—long past selfishness, lost past investment. You don’t know _how_ to want without caution. How to navigate this new minefield of uncertainty—how to remain unscathed, because your people need you more than you can _want_. It is a frivolous thing you had cast away to harden yourself, to stagger to your feet and keep going onward. Hope is a well-crafted arrow driven to the center of you, poison leaking into your veins and yellowing your blood. It will surely kill you, it will shatter each and every bone, and drain the red into this ground you claim as your own. These sky people call you _grounder_ , and maybe they have it right.

You are the ground. And she is the sky.

In the moment it takes you to realize you are moving forward, you’ve already slipped your fingers through the gold of her hair. You’ve captured Clarke’s lips just as she parts them to exhale a soft _oh_. They’re soft, and warm, and taste of stardust and sunsets. Your fingers curl against her scalp to hide the miniscule tremor that will give you away, will sell away your tender secret.

Costia kissed you like she was reminding you of something— _someone_ —of the person you _could_ have been, the person you pretended to be when you were in her arms. A false person you could only be in the warm quiet of those few seasons you had together.

Clarke has never known that person was a possibility, has never imagined you as anything more than you are—she is present, and there is something solid and absolute about the way her fingers crawl up your side and grip your elbow. Without care for worn leather, and sharp metal—she holds onto _you_.

Separating just enough to share hot air, you take only the time necessary to fill your lungs before tipping your nose against hers and kissing her again. Someone moans—you pretend there is no chance it could be you—and it only takes two steps to back Clarke up against the table. Her body presses into you like she holds inside her all your missing pieces—she fills in each chipped edge and purposeful crevice that you have forsaken over your life. Her sunlight filtering into all those cracks until you feel warm, and whole, and invincible.

Clarke pulls back, resting her forehead against yours, her lips parted and brushing yours ever so gently. You don’t open your eyes because you know reality waits for you. That it lingers just on the other side of your lids and will press down upon your shoulders with such weight that there will never be a moment as perfect as this one. A different kind of peace than what you have been chasing—it is internal and hard-won, but only temporary.

You feel it slipping between your fingers even as you hold fast to the curve of Clarke’s jaw. You are not made to last—you are not the mountains, or the stars, you are the lines drawn on the beach, and the tide creeps closer with every breath. So much of you wants to keep this hold you have on Clarke, to drag her beneath the waves with you, so that when you breathe the water deep, you’ll be able to look upon her as everything fades away to black.

“I’m sorry; I’m not, I’m—,” she swallows as she speaks, her hands rising to hold yours to her cheeks. Her palms are smooth and soft, so different than your own calloused paws. You open your eyes to find hers already open—so blue, so consuming. “Not yet.” Not _no_ , but not yes, either. Instead of moving away, instead of allowing you to step back, her fingers tangle into the hair at the back of your neck and pulls you in for another kiss. Just a press of lips together, and the tremors that had been in your hands have moved. They live in your lips now, quivering with everything you want to say, everything that lingers in your chest like death sentences. Like bombs and pillars of fire.

“ _Clarke_ ,” her name is a rasp past your eager lips, a warning, a plea, or something unknown between the two. She pulls back to look at you, her celestial eyes skirting along your face like a navigator studying the stars. Her hand is unbearably hot where it rests against the side of your neck, her touch an anchor to this new reality. This place where you feel like a person, mark harshly by war, but not the embodiment of it. You are something else when Clarke presses her lips together, her silence louder than your war horn, her gaze harder to read than a crumbling ruin.

You’re shattered from the moment by the clatter of voices outside, the pitched exclamations that have you stepping away even when you keep your eyes on her. Your fingers loosen and drag along the smooth skin of her jaw before you allow them both to fall to your side.

Your people chatter and cheer, shaking the rust from their bones and the stiffness from their shoulders. You step outside and see the bolt of crimson crawl across the gray like an ascending comet. The signal, the beginning of this final end. You can feel Clarke at your shoulder, her smile just visible at the corner of your vision; this is hers as readily as it is yours. In some ways, more so.

“Bellamy did it.” You’d been walking toward this conclusion for most of your life; sprinting toward oblivion with no solid bridge to cross the drop that has killed each of your predecessors. You’d balanced on the edges of cliffs for so long, ignoring the impossibly long fall, you had forgotten what solid ground felt like beneath your feet.

“You were right to have faith.” To trust, to believe, to _hope_.

Looking down over the edge of the ridge, down into the army that you had amassed; the largest to ever stand shoulder to shoulder. Twelve clans. Ground and sky. Bypassing imaginary lines and defining landmarks. What will happen when the mountain crumbles will be another matter entirely; these warriors are held together by a common enemy, by common beliefs—in you. As foolish as you feel at times with this new world you are molding, you see the belief in their eyes.

You see it in the children that sprint through the rubble of _Tondisi_ with wooden swords and horses. Their faces painted like yours with clay and finger-paints—you’d even seen a small girl with straw braided into her hair. She’d declared herself _skai prisa_ , and had thrown a rock at the boy masquerading as _heda_.

 _No,_ she’d frowned, _I’m the prisa; so, you have to go win me a mountain. Stupid_. The boy had groaned and run off—play sword banging against ruined houses and ducking behind his mother.

You hear _heda_ spread like fire through those looking up, hands holding swords and spears banging against metal encased chests. It becomes a chant, a methodical howl. A battle cry.

Clarke is looking at you, her eyes turning orange against the sunset, holding the last colors of day for any daring enough to look. You feel her gaze like a heavy thing, a weight that settles upon you. She doesn’t say _heda_ , she doesn’t chant or cry. She doesn’t stomp or bang. But her voice shatters through the noise like a loosed arrow.

“Lexa.” It’s quiet, her lips barely moving, her hand curling like she wishes to touch you—to rest her fingertips at your elbow like she had when you’d kissed her. When you’d cradled her face between your warmonger hands and gentled your lips against her own.

Snapping to look at her, she simply watches you. The smile on her pale lips unconscious and it thrills something wild and untamed in your chest. A burn that is soothing and spurring all the same. A kindling fire that smolders in your chest, melting through the winter’s touch that has clasped tightly around your shattered heart.

Jumping up onto the rock at the edge of the cliff, you motion for your banner men, “ _Teik em laud tromon-de_!”

The horns bellow, and a strange stillness settles over the warriors below you. Their eyes look up at you through masks of kohl and chalk. Through grates of metal and shadows of cloth. Your sword sings as it slides free of the sheath— _strik pasa_. Thrusting it upward, point to the sky, you rally them. “ _Gon wor_!”

* * *

There’s something to be said about the end of a journey; those last steps to the Parthenon, the final dune of sand before civilization. Those are physical journeys—length of land and sea that must be overcome. Must be traversed and conquered. You have been as far north as the ice will allow, and as far south as the loneliest island in the great water. You’ve let your toes sink into the loose gravel at the edge of everything; you’ve waited for the sound of it hitting the bottom of the world.

This end is different.

For generations your people have only known the shadow of the mountain. They have feared the sun for in the light the dark seem more macabre. Seems sinister and consuming.

The men from the dark of the mountain have left their marks—in the craters where villages once were, the empty places in families where laughter had once been.

What had Arling thought of when he’d walked off to war? What plagued his thoughts in the silence preceding battle? Did he doubt himself? Did he think of all those that would be lost, and decide that in the end it wasn’t worth it? Did regret and sadness sit in his stomach like a sour taste? Ash on the back of his tongue making it impossible to swallow the acidity away.

Did he look through the boys and girls around him and know that they die for him? The eager loyalty in their eyes, the vitality in their limbs—did he push those images aside to imagine what they would look like still and bloody? All life drained away like rain through the branches. How heavy was his heart on the day he died? His second cradling his mangles face in her small child-like hands.

Would he have given all that away for a second chance? Would he do things differently? Gain back all those he had lost foolishly, because for every misstep, it was never him who truly paid—until it suddenly was.

You want to think about tomorrow, about regret, and loss, and missteps, but you can only settle like cooling metal in the present. There is nothing inside you, nothing of movement or life, there is only an odd sort of tranquility. A serene silence that swallows sadness, and pain, and uncertainty.

Tomorrow will be tomorrow.

You think on yesterdays.

You can only remember how Anya had pressed war paint to your eyelids that first time, she had looked at you and had only seen _him_ —the dead man you were supposed to be. She’s searched the green of your eyes for flecks of gold and brown—for cheeky joy and curled humor. You’ll never know for certain if she had found it, but she had kept you all the same. Loved you still, even if you only had the worst parts of Arling. His stubborn nature, and his unyielding drive. His reckless abandon, and his brisk countenance.

She had sat you down—a girl of only ten or so summers—and tried to explain how heavy you would become. How the weight would wrap like unforgiving ropes around your neck, dragging you desperately toward your grave. Every moment, of every day.

An expiration date hung with certainty over your head.

She had thought you unaware, that you have been blissfully ignorant until she had shattered your world—until you’d slipped into her focus carelessly arrogant of where you thought you belonged. “I was supposed to keep you safe,” she had exhaled, tired and sad, “until you could bear this weight.”

So much of you yearns for Anya.

For the guidance you had always told her you didn’t need, regardless of how much you did. You were as much a product of her as you were your father—she had taught you something that could be mistaken as honor, even if it was tipped on its head and misshapen.

Your hand has settled on the pommel of your blade, fingers tapping an uneven rhythm out against the polished metal. Clarke has slipped through the ranks to find her wayward Blake, who is no doubt sneering in your general direction.

Indra has fallen in beside you, her shoulders stiff and her gait ever so uneven—you want to tell her to fall back, to stay in the rear, to be alive when this is done. But you would not do her that unkindness. You would not ask her to swallow her sadness once more, to be quiet when her demons come out to play.

“The north sends aid,” you say instead of everything you aren’t, “workers to rebuild _Tondisi_.” The village you had forsaken. The people you had killed for a dream.

This dream, but regardless.

“Something I never would have thought I’d live to see.” Wry, and you look at her to see if it was indeed pride in her voice. It most certainly is in her eyes. Such expressive eyes, if one truly knew where to look. Daxon’s eyes. “Seems only yesterday they were burning it to the ground themselves.”

How times have changed.

“ _Ah won kru_ , Indra.”

“ _Sha_ , _heda_.” A one people; had Costia imagined it would one day include those who had tumbled from the stars? That it would reach to each corner of the land, and into the heaven’s as well?

You wished that she had lived to see a world free of shadow—you wished Enrik had been able to know peace. That he could lay his weapon down, and write as he wanted—could warn children away from bloodshed and violence. As he had once a little sparrow.

You look forward—where a warrior in gray fur and pale war paint stands shoulder to shoulder with a man who would have been his sworn enemy only summers ago. They laugh a little too loudly now, comparing scars along their forearms—a burn, it seems, and a large uneven gouge. They shove, and jostle, and pull others in.

 _Floudonkru_ , _flahkkru_ , _lekkru_ , _azkru_ , _trikru_ —how had no one seen the similarities before?

Shoulder to shoulder you march beside your general. You’ve always appreciated Indra’s silence, because she holds it so well.

“So, _heda_ ,” looking at her, you try to discern the look in her eye, mirrors of Daxon’s own, “The children tell me you’re winning this mountain for a _prisa_.” She doesn’t smile, or laugh, but her eyes are darkly amused, even more so when you turn away to gaze impassively at your shoulders—pretending that you don’t feel half the fool.

“They have no appreciation for the grandeur of this battle,” you grouse, low enough that only your general can hear.

“I’m sure, _heda_ , I’m sure.” She offers you the smallest of smiles—the first you’ve seen since Daxon had died, since you’d woken delirious in that village. Hints of the woman she had been in your youth shining through—pride, and strength, and wry amusement.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come be my friend on tumblr, I'm a nonsense word that likes to talk to people. And I reblog ridiculous things. You can follow me @ **civilorange**


	18. with blood soaked fingers, and sin heavy bones

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “ _Agreed, Commander_.” You’re two marred beasts; committing horrors for your people, bearing the weight of all the death you’ve caused. “ _I wish this could have been different_.”
> 
> You know he isn’t lying, because you do too—you would give away all your glory, all your battles won, and all your legends made. All of it meant nothing if you could give your people peace. Give them back their dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we've come to the end of season two, the betrayal we all knew was coming, and it doesn't hurt any less knowing what I'm going to be writing. Much like Finn, I've always been a little on the fence about Dante, but actually writing him kind of gave me better perspective. What he's done hurt him, and he's determined to do whatever is in his power for his people, but unlike Lexa, and unlike Clarke, he can't commit. He values his own morality more, at times. And while watching, I couldn't tell if that made him better, or worse than I initially thought.
> 
> Two more chapters to go; the end is neigh. I finally put that /20 in the description.
> 
> Also, I realized after I wrote this that Emerson was a lieutenant, but I was too lazy to change every instance of his rank. So, in my world he got a demotion for being a douche. 8)

Plans are useless in battle, they don’t last for long.

You know this, but why had you hoped otherwise?

“Commander!” A voice punches through the chaos like an arrow; aimed and sent flying. But you are no dog to come to heel, you need not mind them.

Thrusting your blade deep into the gut of another of their tunnel soldiers, his eyes dark, his face young, you watch the graying of his skin as he slips away. It takes moments when there is no hope; all things human, all things _alive_ bleed away like rain falling from the sky.

Shaking him away, you step over his falling body, moving forward—always forward—blood is warm and thick against your cooling skin. As night falls, your breath is beginning to frost before your war stained face. Your _jusbrotas_ fall in around you, an iron curtain that refuses to move away—you flow over their soldiers like water slipping the edge of a cliff. Jumping from the slight height and crashing into them.

A man easily twice your size is pinned to the ground by your dagger through his throat; the crimson that he has stolen from your people bubbles up through his lips, smearing across his cheeks until it finally drips into the dirt. You would bleed every drop from him if you were able. You would carve each and every one of these moles open and repossess the life force that belongs to your people.

“Commander!” The voice is louder, clearer, because many of their men have fallen back behind cement barriers and churned piles of earth. There are still bullets slinging through the air, but they’ve tipped upward and away—dinging off tree trunks, and off into the dark of the sky. “Commander.” Why do they drawl your title so _empathically_ , like they know what it means, like they know how heavy that title sits on your chest, pressing the air from your lungs.

Pressing your back against the cool cement of a barrier, you’re gulping down breaths made metallic with blood, your blade’s tip dug into the copper soaked earth at your feet. Your men fall in around you, kneeling, and slanted with fatigue—hard pressed to find a more difficult fight than against a battalion of rifle wielding tunnel rats.

You’re listening for something other than the strange stillness that has fallen over the ridge, not silence, because battle still erupts from all sides, but it is somehow different. Somehow— _wrong_. It is haphazard and yet—meticulous. There’s a pattern to the bullets pinging through the air— _pop, pop_ , pause _, pop_. It is too rational, too planned, to belong in battle—there’s no passion, no desperation.

“Our President—our _commander_ —wants to talk terms.” The man is distant, you can tell that by how his voice echoes; bouncing off the caverns and cement surroundings. They’re scared—their doors have been cracked, and their safe haven is crumbling. Your warriors vibrate with life, each of them looking at you with ferocity and a chaotic savagery.

You know your lips are curling to match, a sneer—a snarl—that is silent and coaxing. As you’d said to Clarke, you must be able to look these men in the eyes, and tell them—not ask them—to die for you. You’re about to let the order out, when the voice cracks through the air again.

“You can have your people, Commander.”

Gritting your teeth for a moment, and exhaling through your nose, “ _Raun_ , _ai_ _jusbrota._ ” Looking pointedly at the two you intend to skirt the distance. Too many would draw attention, and make it impossible—but two men more at home in the shadows?

When they slip away, you hold fast to your position—pressing fingers to the blood leaking out of your wounded shoulder. It was hidden by armor and leather, but you can feel the fabric chaff away at the wound—teeth clenching pain hazy at the back of your mind. Behind the cold calculation you need in war—you are no snarling dog. You are removed from your people in that sense—you must be.

Erratic gunfire, and loud yelling lets you know that your _jusbrotas_ have reached their destination—one tip of your chin has the remainder of your _gonakru_ bursting through the hanging smoke. Chasing the call and crashing into the dug in soldiers—most are nearly dead, their mouths gaping and gurgling, their fingers barely grasping the weapons in their hands.

“Commander, how nice of you to drop in.” He’s smug, a narrow faced man with compromising eyes—your warriors have him trussed up, hands bound in front of him, ankles tied. Looking to Moira, your closest _jusbrotas_ , he tips his chin toward something at the man’s heel—a small device with a blinking red light.

“ _Corporal Emerson_ ,” a tinny voice chirps through it, static crawling over the words, “ _Corporal Emerson, do you read me?_ ”

“That’s for you,” this snake of a man drawls, blinking light colored eyes slowly, “My leader, he wants to make a deal.”

“A dead man cannot make deals,” you’re suddenly cold inside, your chest a tundra, while your stomach burns and coils molten unease. You feel like a stranger who has stolen away into your bones, a trespasser locked inside your skin, stretching it outwardly and misshapen. Too large, too sharp—too _other_. You breathe through your bared teeth, filling your lungs, making them press painfully against the inside of your ribs.

“He’s very much alive,” would he smile so crookedly if you carve through the meat of his cheek? “And the lives of your people rests on you picking up that radio.”

“ _Corporal Emerson_.” The voice is echoing and hollow, inhuman through the static and disjointed flow of letters.

Shoving your blade tip first into blood softened ground, you crouch in front of your ensnared _gothrumous_ , watching him quietly. Leaning your weight against your sword, hand still tight around the hilt, you pick up the _radio_ —listening to the periodic chirp. Rhythmic, systematic, inhuman. This is why these men fumble through your forests—this little device that says their leader will not find you face to face. He will cower in his mountain, he will duck away from wrath and retribution.

“ _Sit-rep, Corporal._ ”

“To talk you have to p—,” he doesn’t get to finish before you press the button on the side—you’d seen the surly limping sky person use them a time or two; while she also glowered in your general direction. Your voice is low, but crisp—Costia would be proud.

“Corporal Emerson is indisposed at the moment,” your eyes promise him worse than that as you let off the button for a moment.

There is a long silence.

“ _Commander, I’d hoped you’d deign to speak with me_ ,” this man is different than the one who had been demanding a report—he is soft spoken, cultured, but something about him sits improperly with you. “ _My name is Dante Wallace, the President of the people of Mount Weather, and I’d like to rectify this misunderstanding between our people._ ” He reminds you of the bone men, the archaics that haunt the ruins of the world that was.

“What exactly is our misunderstanding, Dante of the mountain men?” Your _jusbrotas_ have all seemed to find you—towering shadows of jungle cat teeth, painted red in mountain man blood. “How you have harvested and killed my people for generations?” You’re speaking through clenched teeth, but your words are solid, and unwavering—Corporal Emerson is who worries about your countenance. “Or how we intend to reclaim what is ours in full?”

You wonder if he hurts like you do—if the pain inside his chest is crippling, if it shudders through his lungs and presses against his stomach, making him sick. Is he truly a monster? A cowering beast that has nowhere left to hide, so he plays nice with his captors. Apologizing with skin and blood stuck between the teeth of his beguiling grin.

“ _Commander, may I be frank?_ ” An idiom you have not heard before, but he only pauses long enough to take a breath. “ _What has happened between our people in the past cannot be undone. There would be no meaning—no weight—if it could be._ ”

The static crackles into play, and you push the button. “Meaning isn’t what I intend to find in your mountain.” You don’t care about _meaning_ , or _weight_. You care about the people you have lost to the belly of the mountain, you care about the men savaged so inhumanely into reapers. There is no enlightenment waiting for you at the end of all this—no single moment of clarity.

Somewhere out there is a tomorrow you have sold your soul for.

And you intend to grasp it fully with blood soaked fingers, and sin heavy bones.

“ _We’ve been watching you, Commander. Ever since they found you as a girl—what were you, nine or ten?_ ” He pauses, as if expecting you to respond, but you are done humoring him. “ _They asked the impossible of one so young—and yet, here we are. Speaking for the first time, leader to leader._ ” Why do these foreigners put so much weight behind _age_ ; like it is unfathomable that one might become self-aware before bones begin to creak and skin begins to fold.

There is still the occasional ping of ammunition, still enough to seem chaotic from a distance, but the ground is undisturbed around you. The bodies are dead and still, and those mountain men who are alive are smart enough to stay down. The last one who had shifted was treated to a mace through his skull.

“ _I ask you to leave here—to take your army, and walk away._ ” Imploring, heavy with the _meaning_ he is so fond of. “ _If you choose to abide, your people will be released—nary a hair out of place._ ” Your hand tightens around the radio, the plastic creaking in your white knuckled grip. How many are stowed away inside the mountain? How many are locked up in cages—treated like _animals_.

“And why would I choose to believe you?” It is obvious how hard your words have gotten, solid and sure. The mountain is a demon that has plagued your people for generations. You don’t quiet realize you’ve stood up—towering over this captured soldier—until you see the stretching, skeletal shape of your shadow. Dark and harrowing, crawling across your enemy’s face—from this angle, you are the monster.

“ _Because in many ways we’re alike,_ ” he’s distressed, his words aren’t praise, but acknowledging—he is aware of the price, you suddenly understand, this mythical man who has been the harbinger of this crippled broken world. He’s capable of such things—such horrible, monstrous acts—because he _too_ sold his soul for a better tomorrow. “ _We’d do anything in our power to protect our people. I know you’re reasonable, Commander; I’m letting you save everyone. Haven’t they lost enough?_ ”

Like glass shards sitting in your lungs, cutting them and making the words bloody before you even speak them. “Everyone. You say everyone.” It is you now, that sounds distant, far away and untouched—the chill that had settled inside you grows colder. Freezing the air in your lungs, “But you don’t include them—the sky people—do you?”

No, of course not. Because he needs them—they are his people’s salvation, in the same way yours had been. He has relinquished his hold, not because of goodness, or regret—but because you’ve become a solution. You are the heavy weight driving these sky people through his locked door.

“ _No, Commander, I don’t_.” He sounds sad, worn down and shattered—his words bleeding and brittle, and you imagine a dying man. Living only to shoulder the menace necessary to secure a tomorrow—his people’s tomorrow. “ _They aren’t your people._ ” Like you need reminding, like you don’t _know_.

But something stupid, and childish wants to pretend otherwise—pretend you don’t know what you’re about to do.

You’re a monster—indeed the demon the north paints you as.

“The one’s you have; no more.” You _can’t_ —no, that isn’t right. You could, but you _won’t_. You can’t pragmatically weigh the gain against the possible loss—you can have _all_ your people. No death, no slaughter; you can bring them home to their families. Fill in all those empty places in homes that have multiplied through the seasons. You can do that, all you have to do—is do nothing.

Walk away.

“ _Miss Griffin won’t give up_ ,” your chest aches— _Clarke_ —somehow you’d managed to outline your actions without thinking of her. Managed to be _heda_ , and not Lexa—not the stupid girl who never knows when to stop.

“Clarke doesn’t know how,” fondness crawls into the edges of your words, lightening them, as they rumble with hate—not for these self-entitled tunnel rats, but for yourself. For the things you are capable of—for how broken you are inside that this will be a victory. “Have your mountain, Dante of the mountain men; the sky people are on my land, you leave them be.”

You can do that math over and over in your mind—and you will always be right. Will always be in favor—even if that favor is soaked in blood.

You will not save Clarke’s people, the small band she had fallen with—but you will protect the rest, even if they don’t know. Even while they hate and threaten—you cannot allow any more to die. You cannot justify it after _Tondisi_ , you can’t shoulder any more death.

No, you can, you must—forty-eight more dead.

 _Clarke_.

“ _Agreed, Commander_.” You’re two marred beasts; committing horrors for your people, bearing the weight of all the death you’ve caused. “ _I wish this could have been different_.”

You know he isn’t lying, because you do too—you would give away all your glory, all your battles won, and all your legends made. All of it meant nothing if you could give your people peace. Give them back their dead.

You hold the radio loosely at your side, more of your weight leaning on your blade— _strik pasa_ holding you up with no effort. You’re not looking at your _jusbrotas_ , nor at Corporal Emerson. You look past them toward a haggard, tired man in a uniform—his hat tucked under his arm, his graying dark hair hastily combed back behind his ears. The golden shield on his chest is bright in the hazy dark, glinting through the smoke and mist— _Metropolitain Police_ , _Washington DC_. He is smiling, but there is nothing happy about it—nothing besides sadness, and grief.

“It was supposed to save humanity,” he says, swallowing back a lump in his throat. This man had died so that Mount Weather was able to close—Marcus Sullivan had walked into oblivion content with his place in history. As his spirit lingers in your chest, he is able to see how choices reverberate through the years—humanity had saved itself, it had adapted, and come back, as it always had before.

“This isn’t _humanity_ ,” you exhale the words, watching how his dark blue eyes look away, into the dark that masks the visuals of battle, even if the sounds do filter through. You want to tell him that his decision isn’t this—isn’t all this blood, and death. The people he had saved had not chosen to be monsters; their children, and their children’s children had. They’d forgotten how the sky looked above them, or how the grass felt below them—in much the same way your father had been leery of the great water.

Everything is misconstrued by distance.

“Marcus Sullivan.” You lift the radio to your mouth, the plastic touching your bottom lip—you look at this dead man, this spirit tethered to your own, and you hurt for him. You hold inside you his pain, his broken heart, how crippled he feels he has made the world. “Who is he to you?”

Based on how quickly you get a response; there is no strategy, no filter, Dante Wallace is not expecting this.

“ _How do you know—,_ ” You interrupt him, pushing your button to establish connection.

“Who. Is. He. To you.”

A longer wait, all the while you watch your phantom shuffle around the dead—tentative, and awkward. He isn’t a killer, not like you, not like all of his successors—he was _heda_ before the spirit was known. He lived in a world that didn’t _need_ leadership so much as it _wanted_ it.

“ _He saved us._ ” Slow, filled with worry, because this President knew you were reasonable, knew you were intelligent—but he wonders now how far that goes. About what _exactly_ you know. “ _He closed the mountain before the bombs fell_.” Marcus Sullivan did not save humanity, but he had done what he’d been able to. The only thing that had made absolute sense at the time—just as you are doing now. You will surely hurt more years after your death, while you linger in the soul of the next _heda_ , but you can’t let that stop you now.

You can’t be weak.

“He did,” you agree, and you make a motion toward your gathered men, they move forward as if tethered by string; yanking Emerson to his feet, cutting the bindings around his ankles and shoving him forward. “May we never meet, Dante of the mountain men.”

Dropping the radio, you turn and walk toward this decision you’ve made—the repercussions won’t be here, on this mountain side. It will be down below; head high, Marcus Sullivan falls into step beside you. His shoulder brushing yours as he lifts his cap and settles it low on his brow, slanting close to his eyes.

“You sure about this, kid?” He asks, his voice sad, his lips unsure whether to smile, or frown.

“Yes,”

He looks at you—really _looks_ at you—and shakes his head, “No you aren’t.” He taps his chest, right beside his golden shield—right where the woman he had loved had shoved a blade hilt deep. “I can feel it. You’re ass-backwards about this.”

He grimaces now, “God almighty, it _hurts_.”

But that doesn’t matter—hurt is not death, pain is not the end. You’ve learned that time, and time, and _time_ again. You’ve trudged through blood and death for your whole life, to get to this place—this moment where you can somehow justify everything you have done, everything you’ve been capable of.

Everything you’re capable of still.

Only to have more bodies added—more to walk through and around, more to dig graves for in your soul. One which you refuse to put a name to—one that is six feet deep and empty. Near Costia, and Enrik, near the worst consequences you’ve held inside for so long. This one might break you—it should, if you were human, and _good_. But you aren’t—you have no _humanity_.

You’re a monster, just like Dante Wallace.

“It’ll always hurt,” wiping your blade against your thigh, so that you may sheath it back at your side. Your forearm resting on the hilt, “But you move past that, and do what is best for your people.” Turning to look at him just out of the corner of your eye—he looks so displaced; his uniform crisp, his gait restrained and worried.

He starts to bleed, the crimson pouring through the white of his button-down shirt. He raises two fingers to the sudden wound, but he isn’t surprised—after all, this is how he died. “I guess you’re right, kid,” he’s resigned, he’s accepted this horrible world that is not his fault—he is not responsible for the actions of others.

Not Dante Wallace. Not you.

“I’m sorry, though; God, I’m so _sorry_.” You can’t assuage his guilt, you can’t stop his hurt—just as you can’t stop your own. Corporal Emerson looks on with concern, his face a shade paler, though his smile has returned smug—a mask if you’ve ever seen one. Your _jusbrotas_ don’t worry, they don’t question—they are yours in ways that no one else can be.

Not Costia, not Enrik—not even Clarke.

“Find peace, Marcus Sullivan.” You wish it for him, because you don’t deserve it. “This isn’t your world any longer.”

It hasn’t been for generations.

He walks, his hands tucked into the pockets of his pressed pants. His pistol displayed on his hip; the gun he had used to kill the woman he loved. The woman who had ended the world out of some strange sense of power—she was foolish enough to think herself a god.

“You’re a good kid, Lexa.” He’s getting lighter, his color bleeding away, like he’s loosening his grip on the world. Like he’s finally accepting that this has all happened, that you don’t _blame_ him. You have his soul, its nestled deep inside your chest, he’ll always linger—but he doesn’t have to do so in pain. He can find peace. “I know you don’t believe it, but maybe one day you will.”

He stops, and you find yourself stopping too; just outside the torch light of the army gathered before the mountain’s door. Looking at you, he smiles, nearly nonexistent now; nearly faded away. “Take care, kid.” He walks away and you lose him in the dark, as he steps between shadows—and then into them.

Becoming them.

A coward would turn away now, would sound the retreat from the shadows, and leave Clarke to wonder—or worse, to hear it from this rotten, shameless man. But while you are many things, a coward has never been one of them. Brave, and dangerous, and hopeful. There’s a desire to wipe the blood from your cheeks, to hide away exactly what you’d been doing up in the peaks of the mountain—but you don’t deserve those benefits of doubt any longer.

Clarke will see you now, see you wholly—blood on your cheeks, and cold choices in your heart.

When you speak to your warriors, your voice is hard, there is no sign of the waver that lingers in your blood like a sickness. To them you are _heda_ , you are nothing beyond this command that sits upon you like armor. Unbroken, and unquestioned. “ _Chil yo daun_!” A brisk order through the fog of war, it hurts you how instantly they listen—one warrior dies from how he slackens, catching a bullet to the chest. You are not just their leader, you are their deity—you connect them to the world that was, to the world of tomorrow. To everything they can’t possibly understand.

They accepted the coalition because you said it was to be—they accepted the alliance with the sky people, because you made your choice—they will accept this too. They would look to you, and not understand—but be _alright_ with that, because of _you_.

Simply being who you are, has made Clarke’s people nonentities.

They don’t matter in the grand scheme of things. Because they are children in this conflict, their weight miniscule without the addition of your own. A spear tip is no use without the shaft, without the skilled hand to throw it.

You’ve taken that from them.

Your army parts for you, stepping aside, watching you from behind metal grates and smudged kohl; reverently, loyally. You’ve never done wrong by them—and you never will.

But the sky people, are not _your_ people.

Clarke’s a beacon in the fog of war. Her golden hair glinting red and orange in the torch light. She is the meteor that crashed into your world; she is good, and right, and still holds onto the pieces of her soul. Barely, you know, but still—she feels guilt, and sorrow, still flinches away from the violence. And because of that, she is going to die.

She is playing this game with villains who have had their morality bled from their bones, who have made homes in their souls for sins amassing by the hundreds. How many has Dante Wallace killed for his people? A thousand?

Once upon a time, Enrik had stood before you in his sound mind, and asked you something you’d never been able to say out loud yourself. “How many have you killed for peace, _Leksa_?” He’d known your tally, even if the child king that had stood before him was no one he recognized—a leader, no longer a small girl. “I’m just willing to kill a few more.”  And here you stand now, committing another few dozen to death—for _peace_.

She looks at you like she already knows; like she feels it someplace inside. “What is this?”

You hold her gaze, the blue of her eyes like fire in the dark, the frown on her face beautifully tragic—your people begin their exit, too close to the door to have been just released. Dante Wallace knew you would agree, knew your heart—as he knows his own. He’d had them ready for release; there had been no doubt in his mind.

He knew you’d give anything for them.

They are shadows of their former selves—pale, and shivering. Their bodies’ bruised and brittle—bones pressing against the thin texture of their skin. And you know you’ve done what is best for them—their spirits may have been willing to fight, but their bodies would not abide. They would have died by the dozens, they would have drowned in their own blood, and ceased to be—and to show for their effort, you would have had a mountain to bury them in.

This is not a sleeping army, this is an imitation. A trick of the light. In a months’ time, with medicine and their families, they will follow you again into the foray, but now—now they limp like invalids into the welcoming embrace of your forward militia. The warriors greet them with wide savage grins, and comradery.

“They’re surrendering?” Disbelief—she _knows_ , but hopes still.

Her hope is what drive the pain home.

Corporal Emerson won’t let her hope for long, “Not quiet.”

Clarke looks at you like you’ve shattered into half a thousand pieces; like she’s realized just how difficult it was for you to remain whole. She knows the individual parts of you—some of them, the one’s you’d shown her—but she can’t put them back together. Can’t make _sense_ of what you’ve become. “What did you do?” Her voice rasps, scared and alone; because she’s surrounded by your army, the obvious scale of your influence.

The weight you shouldered together suddenly heavier, because you are to her what you’ve always been— _other_.

“What you would have done,” you say flatly, as if the words don’t belong to you, as if you’re merely speaking some far off truth. You did this— _you_ did _this_ to _her_. “Saved my people.”

You see the first of many cracks, the first shuddering fault in her calm, “Where are _my_ people?”

They’re dead; a sacrifice you were willing to make, a death count you would shoulder willingly, because of what it got you. “I’m sorry, Clarke,” Are you? Can you be? How predominantly selfish you are; how horribly self-involved. “They weren’t part of the deal.”

Turning to Corporal Emerson and his blasé smile, you cut the rope that holds his hands together; he tries to conceal the flinch of seeing you wield your bloody dagger with efficiency. Your _jusbrotas_ step back and away, giving him breathing room without you having to order them.

“You made the right choice, Commander.” He smiles again for you, a private _perverse_ smile, like he could possibly understand what is happening inside you. Like you’re a _child_ who has decided to come clean—he can’t know, because he is the brash bully of childhood, a boy with a gun and a smirk.

Watching him walk away, stepping through those leaving the mountain—you almost let loose the dagger in your hand, you almost shatter this deal with a single death.

But you don’t; your people come first.

As Echo shambles from the dark keep, you narrow your eyes—you hadn’t been alerted that the _azkwin_ ’s youngest sibling had been captured. Which explains in full why the north had become so helpful, why they don’t try their hardest to undermine and hinder. She catches your gaze solidly, her chin sitting proudly while she stops, letting those others captured with her pass her by.

You’re broken from the stare by Lincoln, who walks up, bristling with something bordering on descent. “What is this?” He knows; in his kind, good heart he knows.

“Your Commander’s made a deal.” You’re not his commander any more, you can see it in how his eyes chase away, how he looks at anyone but you—how he shifts only half a step closer to Clarke. He isn’t Clarke’s—or the sky people’s. He belongs to a girl, in the way you had once wished to belong to Costia.

Possessed by foolishness.

“What about the prisoners from the Ark?” Your dagger slides back into the sheath at your hip; you don’t bother wiping the blood away. You look at Clarke, only at Clarke.

“They’ll all be killed,” it hurts how her voice breaks, how her eyes become bright and glassy; how you’ve broken her so fully. You’ve killed her—she can walk away, you know this. Just as you know she _won’t_. “But you don’t care about that, do you?”

It is instantaneous, this need to make sure she knows.

“I _do_ care, Clarke.” How often do you say her name? How often do you taste the letters that form her—the hard click of sound against the roof of your mouth, the scrap of your teeth on your tongue. “But I made this choice, with my head, and not my heart.” And what a crippled limping thing your heart has become—rotted away and festering for all the abuse you have caused it. All the horrible, painful choices you made despite how tender this stupid beating thing inside your chest is.

“The duty to protect my people comes first,” always. Forever. Until your dying breath, and beyond.

She steps closer to you, her face shifting out of the light, and into the shadows with you, lingering so close you can smell the smoke in her hair—like you did that first night. You can feel her warmth, feel how her fingers touch the worn leather of your gauntlet—scrapping her nails against your wrist. Not violently, no angrily—beseechingly. Like she was trying to burrow into you and find whatever kindness she believed to have survived inside you.

You are a wasteland inside, nothing lives there any longer.

“Please, don’t do this.” The words are wet, and pleading, begging you to reconsider. You know if you ask anything of her, anything—she’d agree. She’d be yours in this hellish nightmare of a world, she’d rot away with you until the end of everything. But you can’t ask that of her, you can’t—and you won’t.

Because your people come first.

You are nothing if not the vanguard of their safety.

“I’m sorry, Clarke.” Her fingers dig into your pulse—her fingers trembling and harsh, your pulse strong and steady.—and she drifts closer still, like she intends to see in your eyes something you haven’t said. Like there is still something there that might belong to her; that is whoever— _whatever_ —she thought you might be.

“Commander, not like this, let us fight.” Lincoln is outside this moment, you see that in Clarke’s eyes—she doesn’t hope to find anything anymore. She steps away from you, slowly, still far too close—her scent in your nose, the ghost of her touch on your skin.

“No,” cold, final, “the deal is done.”

And the door closes.

“ _Teik oso raunnes laud_.” They turn without consideration, a visceral hive minded creature—stalking back into the darkness on your word. You watch how large scarred men curl arms across the shoulders of brittle prisoners—careful in a way you aren’t used to. They protect these weak creature that have emerged from the dark, fold them into the security of their masses, walk with them away from their captors. They’ll be safe, you’ll make sure of it.

“You too,” you look at Lincoln with a knowing weight, asking him to not make you do this—to not force your hand as he knows will be the case. “All my people withdraw, those are the terms.” You almost say _our_ , but he isn’t yours anymore—and these are your people.

“They’ll be slaughtered, let me help them.” One man cannot make any difference, one man cannot topple a mountain—maybe a star, but not a single love stuck fool.

“ _Sis_ _em_ _op_.” A warrior rushes in foolishly, to take Lincoln’s legs out from beneath him, but the man twists and lodges the heel of his palm into his throat, stepping away and setting his knee in another _gonas_ stomach. A tip of your chin has two of your _jusbrotas_ stepping in, and taking Lincoln to his knees, slinging him between them as if he weighs nothing.

You look back to Clarke—always Clarke.

“May we meet again.” Her lips look like they long to plead, long to ask you again to reconsider—to choose _her_ , but she has pride, even if it is wet with her tears, and sodden with her grief. She looks at you like you’ve cut her very legs out from beneath her.

Inhaling, the air thick with smoke, and metallic with blood, you turn away; your legs bringing you up the incline, and into the darkness before you’ve really processed what you have just done. What you are still doing. You walk at your army’s rear, as they push and shove through the woods—chant, and cheer. Your blood kin walk around you, block you away from view—casting you into their shadows.

They don’t acknowledge the tears making marks through the blood on your cheeks, how your face seems static as an empty cast. Vacant eyes spilling water down an unflinching face—you haven’t cried since Enrik. Not for Anya, not for Gustus, not for Daxon. You’ve kept all that inside, you’d harbored your sadness like a secret tucked away with the ghosts in your chest.

 _Until the battle’s won_ , Indra would say.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, come be my friend on tumblr. 8) You can find me @ **civilorange**


	19. this one's for the torn down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I held a star between my hands,” you extend them slightly, looking at your palms like there might still be hints of Clarke’s stardust upon your fingers—where they had twisted into the gold of her hair.
> 
> Chaten hums, “Sounds a dangerous thing to hold.”
> 
> “The most dangerous,” you agree, flexing your fingers to see if you can remember about how her hair had twisted around them like sunlight at noon.
> 
> “Then why?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So; here we are. 19/20. This chapter was one that just kind of got away from me; most of what made it in here wasn't what I intended, or how I intended. But a lot was hinted/planned form so many chapters ago. This is the aftermath of a hard choice, this is Lexa trying to shed the weight of _heda_ if even for a moment, and finding solace with people who she least expected. People who don't watch her with reverence, and don't listen like her words are gospel. She's trying to reconcile her death, with what she's gained from them; one dead in particular. There a little more on some of the other tribes, on how they are different than the _trikru_ , how they've carved out their own corner of the world.
> 
> So I hope you enjoy this 10K+ chapter, and thank you so much for all your lovely comments. And even more thanks to those who reblog/like all my nonsense on tumblr, it means the world to me that you all enjoy read this, as much as I enjoy writing it.

A hole has been made inside you. Stealing the air from your lungs because you no longer need such mortal things. You’ve step outside your skin, walking through the shadows as if you have become one. There is no lingering hope any longer, there is no far off promise—this is what victory looks like, this is what the sunrise of tomorrow will be. Golden light upon blood and death, making bright all the trespasses you’ve allowed yourself. All the reprehensible acts you’ve dug your inhumane bestial hands into; basked in wholly, because somehow you are above morality and law. You stand above humanity because you’ve shaken it from your shoulders; left it forgotten in some bank of snow, or some dark curve of wood.

You stand as a statue would, at the center of _Tondisi_ ; you watch with graying eyes as bodies are eagerly escorted from here and there. Brittle shadows of men and women, each one shivering like leaves tumbling from autumn trees. A strong wind looks to be their biggest concern, like they will simply shatter into pieces upon the ground if not held up by warm human hands. You’ve stood sentry so long, the villagers no longer cut their eyes to you in wonder—no longer look upon you with ideas of what you have done. The enormity of what had happened—the empty places you have filled overnight.

Families made whole.

The dead returned to life on your command.

Tents large in size have been set up at the edges of _Tondisi_ , the _Azgeda_ aid that was promised; their slanted warfront structures were ready by the time you returned. Filled with the sick and dying, the parentless and young. All those who watched you with hungry eyes; starving in such a way that food will never quench. Their hunger is the cold places inside themselves, the hope they had given up, and no longer know how to retain.

You can’t help them, you can’t give them what they desire.

What they need.

You have no hope to spare.

There’s something about the night that prompts soft words and hushed whispers, even in this time of great return—your people keep their freshly given loved ones close, tucking them in their sides and away into homes. Tomorrow will bring revelry, tomorrow will start a new world. They don’t know—don’t _understand_ —how you’ve built it on the dead; piled their bodies high so that your world can live in the clouds. Away from the killing ground below. Away from all your sins.

Only one tent is loud, and unapologetic, and the sound of it reminds you firmly of something—of children throwing themselves over each other, piling high and claiming victory. Only to tumble gracelessly toward the ground—bruises and cuts aplenty. But nothing can stop a child who wishes to play. You find yourself walking forward, slipping through shadows toward the tent bright with torch light. It is long, two tents tethered together by rope and sheet metal.

It is a familiar sight.

They don’t notice you when you walk in, they are too busy chasing each other around. Some with wooden swords, others in war paint, and some with straw braided through their hair. You are able to remove the sword at your waist, leaning it against the crates piled high, and sitting down on another to simply watch. These orphans have nothing, either abandoned or made as such by war—but they smile so wide, so happy. Because they’ve been given nothing, so they appreciate everything. Warm meals, and other children to play with. Furs in the winter, and dips in the lake at summer’s first afternoon.

You can’t discern which clans they’re from, and you’re positive they don’t care—tree, and ice, and water, and bone. Those separations don’t matter in youth, they only have far off horror stories that aren’t _real_ yet. If a child from the mountain walked in, you know there would be no pause; youth loves, and youth accepts in ways that astound your ancient heart.

These are who you fight for, who you sell your soul for—like Washon, and Sonian—who you killed Clarke for. They will never know those distinctions, this coalition will survive because you will not let it die.

You’re there for nearly a candle before the first child notices you—a toddler of no more than three seasons, his eyes impossibly dark, his face a beautiful mix of shadows. The white of his eyes bright and clear, he gapes—looking at you like you had once the warriors returning from the front. The men and women streaked in pale paste, hints of blood forgotten at their jaw.

As others begin to notice, they all stand motionless, and you feel something in your chest—an ache—like you’ve intruded, disturbed their happiness.

“ _Heda_!” Your title has never been said so joyously, the grin splitting this boy’s face is like a sunrise just for you in the middle of this night—the older children are still and unsure how to proceed. But this toddler—this brave little boy—drops his wooden sword to the ground and sprints.

Quick as a northern wind he throws himself the last three feet, and there is no question in your body—even if there might be in your mind—to catch him snugly below the arms. He weighs next to nothing as you hold him out, dangling contentedly in the air—and you know your own eyes are just a hint too wide.

As children do, he cares not for decorum, he presses bare feet against the war-torn fabric covering your knees and proceeds to walk up your body. It isn’t until a wily foot has nearly jabbed you in the throat that you lean back slightly and away from the toes that whistle past your nose as he finishes his flip; landing wobbly on his small bare feet and pressing his warm soft stomach against your knees.

His smile is precious, and you can’t stop the way your fingers trace the round of his cheeks—this precious, priceless thing.

“Do you know how to play swords?” He asks—even his _trigedasleng_ is shaky, but it doesn’t slow him any. He must see the blood still hinted at the corner of your jaw, the faded gray at the corners of your eyes were you could not scrub away the kohl, but that means nothing. You are to be his playmate, and he doesn’t mind for war, or death, or brutal killing hands.

One of the older boys laughs, sharp and loud, his hand pressing to his round full stomach, “Of course she knows!” Cackling, others following even if they aren’t sure exactly why. “ _Branwada_!”

The toddler pressed into you spins in ruddy indignation, “ _Shof op_ , Kayon!” His lips pressed tightly together; his little hands shaking as they clench into fists. You don’t realize you’ve been utterly silent until he is shaking with youthful rage; until you see how the older children—only six or seven seasons—are watching you for a reaction.

“ _Yong won_ ,” your voice cracks, like you haven’t words in your chest; they are being chiseled freshly from your stone heart. He looks at you over his shoulder, his anger already forgotten, “Will you show me?”

If he is a sapling, growing strong and true—he looks at you as if you are his sun, feeding him life, giving away and asking for nothing in return. He doesn’t understand what he gives you—how he sustains you now in this dark impossible place you’ve found yourself. You are wilting, dying slowly in the dark, and he is the sunrise—these children are warm spring morning, and soothing summer afternoons. Bright, and happy, with blue skies and crisp southern winds carrying hints of salt, and freedom.

“ _Sha_!” Exuberant, he looks at the sword you’d brought in and shakes his head firmly, finding his own beaten up wooden sword and thrusts it into your hands. It is impossibly light, and improperly balanced; despite how your hand instinctively curls around the rough wooden hilt, it sits awkward and short in your grip. You look juvenile, unsure and upended.

“Stick’m with the pointy end! You can be my general,” he seems like he could lose all his breath speaking, but a small girl clears her throat loudly, “Oh, Cassea is my general…”

Your eyes squint slightly, watching how he squirms and thinks, tries to find an appropriate spot in his army for you, “Do you have a _seken_? I’d be most honored.” And that is how you, commander of the twelve tribes, are drafted into the service of Peadar _kom ekwhi_.

He tugs you by the fingertips into the center of the room—you are whole heads taller than the oldest child—and stand quietly, unsure how this is done—unsure how to _play_. The children have fallen into their chaotic chase of war—yelling and chanting, bellowing war cries that you aren’t familiar with.

A girl with dark straw hair jabs you painlessly in the stomach, and then stares when you do nothing. “You’re dead, _heda_.” She says, and you blink, “You have to die.”

Properly chastised, you sit on the floor, wooden sword across your lap.

There’s a weight on your shoulder a moment later, a boy of about eight seasons, his war paint blue and charcoal— _floudonkru_. “You brought my _nomon_ back,” he’s quiet, as if he fears the others hearing—these children who did not all gain back parents. “The _maun_ ate her whole; my _nontu_ too, but he didn’t come back.” A mother, but not a father.

“Have you seen her yet?”

He shakes his head adamantly, “The healer says tomorrow, she is sick; she’ll be less sick tomorrow.” She was most likely one of the one who had been carried out; too weak to walk, too scared to stay. You’d seen how frail thin arms shook under their fellow captives—ready to collapse, but refusing to. They had made their own tribe inside that mountain; one made of things stronger than imaginary lines.

“I’m glad she’s returned to you.” These children are tactile and unafraid; your generals and advisors give you wide berth, whole feet of free room, but these children lean, and press, and climb on you like you are no one of import.

“Do you have a _nomon_ , _heda_?” He asks with a tip of his head against yours.

“No, _strik gona_.” You watch the battle tapering off across the room; they’re huddling and whispering, their mock war obviously forgotten in the face of this new plot. “I grew up in a place much like this.”

Whatever his response might be, it is forgotten when the giggle of children gets louder, you turn your attention to watch their slow, methodical crawl stop abruptly—there are six of them, and they all look like they have been caught doing something untoward. They blink at you in an almost comical unity, before roaring out a battle cry, and pouncing.

You find yourself at the bottom of the pile—their wily frames wiggling on top of you, shoving each other, and catching you in the rib—at least three times—with elbows and knees. They have obviously decided to form a coalition of their own, and declare you enemy. You catch the youngest under the arms, tossing them up into the air, only to catch them again. You’d never been particularly inclined toward children—they skirted around you, and watched your war bands trot through their towns. You can only remember how you’d delighted when the warriors heading back, or to, the battlefront would stop to play. The heavy tilt of their shoulders would lighten, and the scarred scowl of their faces would brighten for precious moments—and you child’s heart had leapt with glee.

Their next battle is properly planned—you use the tip of your sword to draw lines of attack in the dirt, and proper formations—they all nod, serious and solemn, and the moment the dark is split by a boy blowing into his fist to signify a horn, they’ve forgotten. Charging aimlessly and loudly; you don’t attack, only parrying their wild swings—had you swung so hard when you were their age?—and as seems to be par for the course, they all gang up and assault you at once. Throwing their tiny bodies across your frame, dragging you to the ground until you surrender to their obvious might.

You don’t feel better—not really—but with their warm weight giggling on top of you, you can accept the demon you are. You are shadow and darkness, so that they might know something else. They can live in sunlight and afternoons; be farmers, and healers, and merchants. Build grand houses at the edges of lakes, and rest quietly in open fields. They might not know fear as readily as you do, because you will do your everything to give them nothing to fear. You bleed slowly inside, so that they might not have to.

A throat clears near the entrance, and the children scramble—yelping and elbowing, pushing and shoving. Acting like they had not just been flailing and yelling; their swords are hidden behind their small bodies, some are swift enough to toss them into hiding—looking properly innocent. You’d left sitting on the floor, wooden sword on your lap, dirt and multicolored powder smudges where little faces had pressed into your own. They look proper and delightful, you look a mess.

“Time for the beasts to get a bath,” she clicks her tongue, and raises a brow.

The woman shepherding the children out and away is familiar. Her face has folded and grayed, her skin mottled with specks of the sun’s touch. Her hair a wiry golden-silver, pulled back into braids and knots—piled high upon the back of her head. She’d seemed imperious long ago, tall and sturdy, powerful and absolute. She’d had no problem taking claim of a situation and doling out punishment with an iron hand.

She’d terrified you, to be honest. You’d been the sharpest rock in her collection, and she’d make you bleed twice for each time you’d pricked her finger. There’s a particular scar across your back from a lashing you had never felt deserving off. She’d looked into your small childish face, your ruddy cheeks clasped between her hands, and she’d called you a _wild thing_. She’d sneered the name like it was the worst thing she could call you—worse than the childhood insults that get tossed around with abandon.

She’d squinted eyes so dark a green that they had seemed black, even the one that was going milky and sightless—looking for things inside you that you know lives in no child of only four summers. She’d wanted much from you, she’d worn your young bones tired with chores, had made you fight and struggle beneath the weight of what was being asked—no, demanded—of you.

You look at her now, and wonder how small the nightmares of your childhood actually are—this woman, who was the personification of terror, does not even reach your chin. She’s frail and nearly bent in two with age; a walking stick the only reason she isn’t crumbling to the ground. She watches you like she could recognize you with both eyes closed in the dark—there’s nothing friendly or open about her face, nothing that says she enjoys laying eyes on you again.

Standing up, you brush the dirt from your hands; squaring your shoulders and spine. Pulling _heda_ back around your shoulders as you look at this woman—the one who raised you the first five summers of your life.

“I hear you have a name these days,” she croons, narrowing her gaze as she slowly shifts through the make shift cots. The orphanage that had been on the inner streets of _Tondisi_ had been obliterated; most of the children had been able to be safely removed, their sleeping quarters in the foundation of the building. Pointing her cane at a crate of supplies, she orders, “Move these over there.” The _azgeda_ had sent aid, had sent supplies and warriors—and this woman who could make orphans polite, could make them sit out of the way so that they hindered no one. She’d certainly done that when you were a girl.

You’re moving without realizing it, two steps forward, something ingrained into your blood, something cold and northern, before you stop and look at her. Not argumentative, not as you had been as a child, but contemplative—considering. “I do,” you reply, bending down to pick the crate up regardless, the weight nothing in your arms.

“Something long and presumptuous, no doubt.”

You wait for the anger to boil, for the indignation to spread, but there is nothing at her words. She’s watching you for a response. You say instead, “Alexander.”

She scoffs, “That’s a man’s name.”

“It’s my name.”

 _My name_. A name that you had chosen yourself, sitting beside the boy who owned the other half of your soul—the untarnished whole part that he had taken to his grave with him. He’d pressed knuckles into your scalp and called you _little sparrow_ , but his eyes had been bright and happy. You would give whole worlds to see Enrik happy again—to see a world that is simple, if bloody. You’d named yourself _Alexander_ , after a boy with a horse, who’d conquered the world.

And now you stand a conqueror yourself.

“Be that as it may,” she sniffs, and leans in such a manner that she acts like it is _she_ who is holding the tent up, and not the other way around. Huffing, she looks down the crooked line of her nose, “ _Aleksanda kom azgedakru_.”

Raising the box above your head, onto one of the taller wooden shelves, your hands press into the rough wood—feeling the splinters dig harmlessly into your palms. “I am not a _zgedakru_.” Your mother was, your father was, and maybe once upon a time—you were. It lives in the color of your eyes, in the straw that curls through your hair in the summer, in the pale gold of your skin in winter.

“Have you denounced yourself, beastie?” Her smile is lopsided and wry, and you remember it rightly, “Become one of these little forest sprits?” She’d lost a husband a lifetime ago to the _trikru_ ; a skirmish south of your home village, one that children spoke of in whispers. The type of battle that had made their parents orphans.

“That would imply the north had any claim on me to begin with,” the hooks were in your blood, not your heart—that had belonged to Costia, and Enrik, and Anya, and Gustus, and Daxon. Your heart belonged to the people in the golden wheat fields to the south, the people baking in the blistering sun to the west. It wasn’t even your own to lay claim to—it was blistered, and bleeding, and ruined—but for some unrecognizable reason, these people wanted it still.

So they will have it.

“You were born to the warmest summer the north’s seen in—oh, two or three generations.” She smiles, not a nice smile, not a kind smile—but you only now realize how sadness clings to her skin like death does yours. It lingers in the shadows below her eyes, in the missing teeth at the edge of her wicked curl, “Little thing, dropped off on the step—we didn’t think you’d last your first winter. Too much fire in your blood.”

It was the rudest of slurs in the north, _fire in your blood_ , to a people cold and remote. There was no winter in your bones to them, you were fickle and weak, fire and sunlight, long hot days and blue skies.

“How many winters do you have now, _Aleksanda_?”

You were born in summer, but the north measures its weight in winter. It is sudden, to realize you have to think on it; you have to stop for a moment, and remember of how long you’ve been surviving. Not _living_ , but surviving. “This one—it will be my nineteenth.” You say finally, brows tucking because are you really that young? You feel ancient and eternal—immortal as your warriors whisper late at night.

“Nineteen,” she is quiet, and when you look at her—she hardly looks a menace. Like all her effort has been wasted on keeping up an expectation of who she is; this brittle, frail creature tries so hard to be cruel, and wrong, and unloved, that she exhausts herself. “Nineteen, and you’ve changed the world. Suppose that’s reason enough to be a pompous little thing.”

“You should not speak to me in this way,” it doesn’t bother you, for whatever reason; while most others would be flayed open, or strapped to a post for their obstinacy. This woman from your childhood can only see you as the creature you were before you left for the rest of the world—a wild thing of barely five summers, who was brash, and reckless, and unapologetic.

“I’ll speak to you how I like, beastie.” It removes you from this thing you’ve become—a beast truly, bloody and amoral—it makes the weight on your shoulders easier to ignore for a moment, easier to pretend isn’t dragging you into a grave that has been waiting for you since you were only a child. Since that first winter no one thought you’d live through.

She looks at you and doesn’t see _heda_ , or _Lexa_ , she doesn’t even see _Skai_ , or _Little Sparrow_. She knew you when you were truly nameless, an unwanted babe who no one thought would live. Summer’s child in the winters of the north. You want to be nameless again, if only for a moment—because the moment you step away, the moment you walk out into the night, you would be all these things again.

You will have nearly nineteen winters of pain shoved tight into the narrow cavern of your chest. Crushing your battered heart carelessly against the inner rungs of your ribcage. Your ghosts will recognize you once more, and tether themselves to your back—clinging tight around your neck.

You wait for your newest ghost.

You wait for Clarke.

“What brings you to the woods of children?” Both hands on her walking stick, her chin tipping slightly to the side. “Shouldn’t _heda_ have much more important things to do?”

“They remind me why,” why you’ve done everything you have, why you cut pounds of flesh, and years of soul out of your chest at every chance. You can’t explain, you can’t open your stone heart and rotten soul up to this woman who can only vaguely remember a small girl—a girl who had been so determined to be who she wanted. What a disappointment you must be; to become what fate decided. To crumble and rebuild yourself in images you can barely recognize in the placid reflection of lakes.

She wants to ask _why what_ , but she’s quiet—she’d always been good at that. Giving you time to speak—to either exonerate yourself, or hang yourself.

A long breath let out through your nostrils.

“I held a star between my hands,” you extend them slightly, looking at your palms like there might still be hints of Clarke’s stardust upon your fingers—where they had twisted into the gold of her hair.

Chaten hums, “Sounds a dangerous thing to hold.”

“The most dangerous,” you agree, flexing your fingers to see if you can remember about how her hair had twisted around them like sunlight at noon.

“Then why?”

You smile, slow and impossibly small, but it is the first thing other than a frown your face has allowed—it feels foreign and wrong on your lips. “I couldn’t not.” You shake your head slowly, back and forth once, allowing your hands to fall at your sides. “A dream told me I would catch a star, so when one fell, I could do nothing but stand below and wait.”

Clarke had tripped into your life a comet drunk on stardust and sunlight, she had made the heaven upon your shoulders lighter. She had stood beside you, back straining in tandem with your own. She’d ensnared you without effort because somehow she believed you more than what you are—a means to an end. The last of your kind—a warlord, a pillaging child king, an amoral hound. The devil’s own right hand.

“And where is your star now?” There’s something in her tone that makes you look up, to search for the cruelty that must surely live in her smile. But she is strangely somber, graying eyes open for once in something other than a glare.

“Dead,” one word to shatter your heart.

Chaten laughs, a sharp bark of a sound, “Stars don’t die, forest sprit.”

“This one did.” At your sides, your hands curls tightly into fists; the crescent of your nails digging into the meat of your trembling palms. “With my help.”

You can’t tell when exactly your nails brought forth blood, but when you raised your right hand, crimson glittered between your fingers. Bright against your skin, clashing with the vibrating dusk.

“If this star of yours made it safely through the clouds,” you can just barely hear her through the thumping in your ears. “I think she’ll survive your clumsy hold.”

If only. You had gotten so good at destruction, you need not even try anymore. It exists inside you in ways heartbeats and deep breaths cannot hope to replicate. You don’t notice the telling use of _she_.

“You think yourself some horrible killer,” she’s scoffing, like you aren’t the demon whispered of in the villages near the _azgeda_ capitol. As if you hadn’t slipping through their night, and slaughtered their last _kwin_. A hound from hell, a split toed devil in their dark winter. “I remember a girl who cried herself to sleep for three nights because she couldn’t save a baby bird.”

You don’t remember this; so long ago it was that your mind has shoved it back into the dark. Where useless thoughts rest—hopes and dreams and everything you’d had inside you before you’d been _found_ that day outside Polis.

“You’d had the thing cradled in your hands, couldn’t have been more than four winters. It’d fallen out of its nest,” she’s leaning heavily on a stack of crates, and if she’d been anyone else, you would tell her to sit. To not be so _difficult_. But maybe that is how she’s survived so long; made it through the harshest winters alone. Caring for all the children that no one else wanted—a frowning saint, this hard, unforgiving woman is.

“You’d brought it inside, hysterical already— _fix it, fix it,_ you’d howled. All the other children were quiet, because they knew. Already they knew.” You can’t imagine a time when death hadn’t clung to your bones, when you hadn’t expected it. Your father had been the first punch to the chest, the first blow too close to home—but you knew about the world before that. You’d seen dead men often enough to not blink or balk.

“And it died?” You guess, rubbing the blood on your palms against the pads of your fingers.

“Oh, beastie,” she’s looking at you like she had that crying girl; you can’t remember this moment she speaks of, but you do remember the look. Like she was astonished that the world hadn’t touched you yet—hadn’t reached inside you and crushed your heart. Chaten had always looked astonished, and maybe a little jealous. “It had been dead since it hit the ground. You just couldn’t tell the difference. You’d seen a baby bird, and had assumed it alive—because that’s what you wanted, it was what you knew.”

Standing, arms at your sides, like you simply don’t know what to do with them, you watch her walk closer. Whole hands shorter, you have to press your chin to your chest to meet her eyes, and she’s smiling—looking at you like somehow, you still astonish her.

“And now you know death,” her hand is cold where she presses it to your cheek, her thumb starting on your forehead and running down—across your eyelid, and down your cheek. How your war paint would have been had you stayed in the north, had you been only _azgeda_. “So all you see is death.”

Your jaw clenches, working hard to keep everything inside, the things that claw and ruin your windpipe, that erode your lungs and poison the air you bring into your body. This woman has only heard stories of what you’re capable of; she’s only heard the tall tales of who you’ve become since that little girl left her village. Since she hopped on the back of a cart, and never looked back.

“I am death,” you’ve been this for so long, for eternities it feels like. With ancient blood, and burned out eyes.

“Oh, beastie,” why does she always say that? Why does she exhale your childhood name with such—with such _sadness_. Like somehow what you’ve become hurts her; you wouldn’t have thought she’d care. But tall and cold now, you see her from such a different light. “Death doesn’t care, death is indiscriminate and careless.” Her cold callous touch rubs over the bridge of your nose, and you can only close your eyes to keep the tears building there locked away.

“You care, so much.” She’s exhaling the words softly, you want to shake your head, you want to pull away, and you want to step out of this place where you feel like a child again. “The day you stop caring about how horrible you feel, is the day you’re lost to us. You can’t regret, or apologize, but you can care; and you do.” She understands how disingenuous it would be—to regret something that saved your people, to apologize for something you would do again.

* * *

Quiet.

Never has your war room been so silent. The man before you dwarfs you easily thrice in size, his hardened features a twisted knot of scar tissue, and the malformed crest of where his deformation had been. The _drisankru_ were more accepting of those with bitter blood—the infants that get cast to the sands far to the west, given back to nature so that they may not pollute the blood of the village.

His massive hands clasp before him, and even curving inward in placation, he is enormous. You’d been awoken in the middle of the night by word that a rider was preceding the magnate of the _drisankru_. The leader that you had treated with many autumns ago, when you’d still been young— _younger_ —and Costia had still been at your side. He’d been smitten with your _gonasleng_ tutor turned lover; she’d reminded him of his youngest daughter. A sweet, wide eyed girl you hadn’t known how to interact with.

Usipe had only been two candle marks behind his forward messanger, riding his ox of a horse into the ground before he presented himself before you. You wear not much more than bed clothing, light colored worn fabrics, with not an ounce of metal or leather. Your hair curling at your temples, and into your eyes. But with the way his slate gray eyes watch you, you’d think yourself presented in your best regalia. Ornate and impressive.

“ _Heda_ ,” he utters, his chin tipping forward until his rough beard touches his chest. It isn’t pleading, but it is something unusual from such an imposing man.

“You call me _heda_ , just as you did five autumns past; when you swore yourself, and your people, to me.” Your fingers drum against the solid wood of your throne, the rhythm slow and calming. Keeping you centered when lack of sleep, and agitation should rightfully win. “And now I hear of this. I hear that _my_ people have kept such thing to themselves for want of _pride_.”

He cannot claim them any longer, he can rule them in your absence, he can honor their customs, he can dispense justice—but _this_. No, _this_ was not his call to make. And he knows it.

“We are a self-reliant people, my warriors would not accept the shade of the wood’s clan. We are the sun’s warriors.” This justification is why you throw away so many traditions—why you gurgle down calf blood before every spring, but never truly believe the sacrifice would do much of anything but give you a stomach ache.

“Even the sun sleeps, magnate.”

He raises his eyes just enough to catch your own, her heavy brow furrowing, casting his gaze into shadow. The desert people were not the hardest to hold within your coalition—that belongs firmly to either the _azgeda_ or the _whetkru_ —but they were the strangest. Their customs so vastly different, their morality slanted away from your own—honorable to their very bones, but brittle and separating. Their lands so vast, their villages sometimes spend whole generations in isolation for no explainable reason.

Their pride is what will be their end—their need to overcome the stigma of their bitter blood, the thing that had cast them aside from other clans. Very few from the _drisankru_ were born in the desert—some were born under the shade of trees, or in the rocking bow of a boat on the great water. The other eleven tribes had been sour at the inclusion of the _drisankru_ —no more than _nomads_ , to many—but you value choice above all. The people of the desert were not _born_ to be a tribe, they chose to be—they made it their own.

But this very same pride is what kills them now.

“Which is why I come to you now, in the dark,” he prostrates himself before you, his heavy knees hitting loudly to the dirt as he presses his forehead to the ground. Hands pressed beside his head, palms up in request. The magnate of the _drisankru_ comes in the dark, so that his sun may never know his shame—and you’ll allow it, even if this should have been brought to your attention days ago.

“How long?” Is all you truly must know—your actions are already in motion in your bones.

“They come just before every other winter.” His voice is muffled by the dirt, and you clear your throat so he leans upward on his knees, “A band of warriors; they take our people, or supplies. We’ve fought them time and again, but they have—,” his brow tucks, harsher now in his confusion. The _drisankru_ don’t know much of the mountain, they are far removed from its influence.

“Rifles,” you supply.

“Yes, _refels_.” You would sell your soul for just a glimpse of that spark on hope you see in your people’s eyes—this large, hardened warrior looks at you like you might set his sacred sun it the sky each morning. Like it is you that puts it to sleep each night so that he might come before you and despite himself, despite his pride, ask for _help_. “No one has ever returned,”

Your heart is beating fast in your chest. Though you have chased peace your whole life, you have only known war—you do not know how to provide for your people if you are not spilling blood for them. “If you need something from me, ask now, _Usipe kom drisankru_. Am I not your _heda_?”

He need only ask.

You are his; you belong to his people as you do the other eleven tribes.

“We are many, _heda_ , but so far from one another. A sickness has plagued us this summer, and my people are weak, _heda_.” Reasons, explanation, but you wait. A prideful man will take seven breaths, even if it only requires one to ask for help. “We ask for help, _heda kom drisankru_.”

You should not be jumping into war so soon, not while you are still stiff and sore from your last campaign. Not while the dead plague you at night, and the living worship you in the sunlight. You’ve become two combating creatures, one of immense guilt and sorrow, and one of unbridled pride and joy. You’ve always been one being, even if you were simply a construct of shattered pieces—rotted and broken—but you war with yourself now. You crumble and rebuild as the sun goes from sunrise to set.

Standing up, feet bare and unadorned with armor you step forward; so close that you can almost taste the sun from his baked skin. He presses his deformed brow against your stomach, his hands still palm up on the ground. Placing your hand on the crown of his head, you meet your chieftain’s eyes through the candle light broken dark. Indra looks worried—but she worries for you much these nights—she sees the demons that plague you, the shadows that chase you.

She’s not accustomed to seeing you run.

He says _heda kom drisankru_ with such meaning—you are of the north, you were bled in the forest, and yet, to him, you are just as readily from the desert.

Bending down, you press your lips to his hair, not a kiss—a promise, “And you shall have it. _Yu laik ain_.”

 _You are mine_.

* * *

The _drisankru_ magnate’s generals join him by the morning; you’ve since ushered him to rest while you prepare yourself for the day, for this new war. When you had been young, you’d foolishly thought you could end all hardship—that there would be some point in which you looked out upon the world and saw no reason to settle your sword at your waist, or place your armor upon your shoulders. The older your ancient bones get, the more you accept that day will never arrive. It is somewhere far off in a fantasy, that even you can’t imagine what it would look like.

Now, as the sun just begins to crest the horizon, it is just you and your general.

Indra mills at your shoulder—she doesn’t speak, and she doesn’t move, but you can feel the tense energy rolling off her in waves. She’s appointed herself your guard in Gustus’ absence, a ridiculous notion considering she is your greatest general—your warriors know that any words that leave Indra’s lips, must be taken as if they are your own.  She is your voice now that Anya is gone. Your _jusbrotas_ don’t speak, they don’t command, but they are extensions of your shadow—they are of your blood. They don’t know how to worry about you, they’re incapable of—they will keep you alive, or pass with you into the next plain.

“You don’t have to,” Indra says for what might be the tenth time, her hand tight on the belt holding her sword in place. Her dark eyes trip over the vast map set out before you. Different than the one that has dominated it for too many seasons. The desert far to the west is impressive, and there is no cover.

“I must,” you murmur, still dragging your finger over lines that set villages and rock formations in place—ruins that were cities in the world that was. “They are mine.”

“This is different.”

“How?” You shouldn’t be allowing this, it is too liberal, but Indra has Daxon’s eyes, and she watches you with concern hidden behind her mask of practicality. She sees how you step around sleep, how you work on _Tondisi_ until your hands shake. “If I had punched my hand through Usipe’s chest and clasped fingers around his still beating heart, it would not have hurt him more than asking for help has.”

She scoffs, “That is his want for pride.”

Closing your hand into a fist, pretending you don’t see how it shakes, how your knuckles whiten, “They are mine to protect. Mine, Indra.” Licking lips that are chapped and dry, “If there are enemies beyond the edge of the world, I will find them.” Before the desert magnate set himself before you, you had never thought to think there people beyond that drop to the west—the edge of the known world. How long have these secrets lived in the golden waste? How long?

“Then send me in your stead, send your armies,” why is she fighting you? Why now, after so long, does she suddenly believe you incapable? “Stay in _Tondisi_ , in _Polis_ ; govern your people, _heda_.”

You understand suddenly. Walking around the table, your fingers dragging across landmarks and coordinates; pushing sextants away from the edges. “You think I’m looking for war,” empty, toneless, your eyes raising slowly to find Indra looking at you like she hadn’t expected you to realize—even though she knew you would. “You think I want this.”

No questions. Just statements.

At that, her jaw clenches, and her shoulders loosen, “I don’t believe you _want_ this, _heda_.” Her fingers tap against her sword, her lungs still strain for breath under the weight of her armor—even this light armor that isn’t for war. “I think you’re relieved that you don’t have to stay—to look at the people you saved. They’re a reminder.”

You close your eyes, “A reminder of what?” Your own mouth incapable of uttering those sounds—that collection of letters.

“Not what. Who.” Indra has never balked, has never shied away from these harder truths, because she is the ground beneath your feet—the river’s currant and the mountain’s impressive silhouette. You are air, and fire—turning and adaptable, and sometimes, you need that steady certainty. “Clarke. They make you think of Clarke.”

Has Indra ever said her name? You find the way the starling’s name sits on your general’s tongue unusual—she stresses different sounds, the _k_ isn’t as hard. But you’ve always had Enrik’s pronunciation. _Azgeda_ blood, _whetkru_ accent _,_ and _trikru_ colors.

Looking up at Indra now, you feel lost—and you know that it lives in your eyes, even if your face is unmoving. You are in the darkest wood, in the blackest night, and even if you see torches in the distance—you can’t make your feet move. You can’t save yourself, because you’ve grown so tired from saving everyone else.

“I would do it again,” you say, like that is some rebuff to her assessment, you don’t lie—because while you are a callous cruel monster, you try not to be a liar.

These small distinctions mean everything.

“And that is what hurts you,” she looks like she hurts for you; but she isn’t Anya, and she isn’t Gustus. She doesn’t know how many times you had broken before, how you had been held up by Anya’s strong arms, and felt her living warmth. How she had pressed you against her chest like she might hide you away inside her so that you might never hurt again. She was mentor, and mother, and friend, and some part of your soul—a part that she took with her.

She doesn’t know how Gustus would watch you, with eyes wounded and sure, like you were so human, and so precious, and he simply couldn’t imagine how you existed. A god and human both, stepping seamlessly between the two—as if even though the sky people stumbled through the stars, it was you who had constellations and galaxies inside you. He was the closest thing you’d ever had to a father—your own had named you _apprentice_ —and he would have taken this pain from you. He would have tattooed it into his own skin, so that you might be lighter.

Clarke; she is a pain that belongs only to you.

“I found Daxon.” Your eyes snap upward, finding her watching you patiently; her jaw works like she’s rolling the words around her mouth before she speaks them. “He was in the tunnels, made a reaper by the mountain men.” All your weight, all your muscle and bones have dropped to your ankles, holding you firmly in place. Empty, and motionless.

“Where is he?” Hoarse, choking on air alone.

Instead of a location, she says, “I left him, the horn sounded retreat, he was unconscious; I told myself I’d come back.” She looks at you, an apology that you don’t deserve in her eyes. “I promised myself I would break my oath, I would ignore your command—I would go back for my boy.”

Swallowing, “I would not have blamed you, Indra.”

“No, you wouldn’t.” No one knows how hard this woman tries—how she adapts, and molds herself to the world, how she goes above and beyond. How she holds her sins on her shoulders and adds rocks to their cause—making them heavier, and heavier, and heavier, until she can barely stand for the weight they put on her spine. And she stands tall regardless. “If someone you love was within your grasp, but it went against everything you are; would you go back?”

 _Love_. It sounds strange in this warrior’s mouth, it tilts unusually, and you can’t help the furrow of your brow. You know Indra loves, it is no surprise, but somehow you’d managed to forget—you’d been able to focus, and look forward, and not backward at all the times it had been proven. She loves Daxon, she loves her people—and in so many ways, she loves you. These things, they lose perspective in war—in the loud chaos, and the quiet that follows.

But she is being honest—and you strive to not be a liar.

“No,” what a monster you are, what a cruel beast, “No, I wouldn’t.”

You left Clarke—you did not love her, but she was…

She was something. You _cared_.

“And that is why you are _heda_.” She smiles, small—so small—and her shoulders roll forward, only to be pushed back. “I was saved the choice by a young boy—a second who had proven himself well enough to join us in the tunnel. Daxon had been his mentor, and he’d lagged behind to pull my boy from the dark. He had just lost his sister, and he had refused to lose anyone else.”

Your palms balance your weight against the table before you—you know loss, you know having a hole ripped inside of you that can only fit the person who is no longer there. But this is new, and strange—having some unquantifiable hurt mended in only moments. To have a piece of yourself returned without warning. Daxon is alive. He had lived, and suffered—but he is home, and he is alive.

“The boy who saved him; what is his name?” You know.

“Washon,” she says, and you exhale a breath through you nose, laughing without joy; disbelief waring for possession of your face.

It has only been four days since you left the mountain, three days since you left a whole people to die—only three days. “Is he well?” Three days.

“He grows strong, _heda_.” She knows where you are going, she knows—this is the woman who has known you for too long. “He hears of your march, and wishes to join. He made mention of you needing your common sense if you’re to go west.”

* * *

Your _gonakru_ leaves that night.

Just as the sun falls toward the horizon, just as _Tondisi_ begins to sleep.

Your forward warriors left candle marks ago; a small band to slip through the country quietly, ready to fall back if there is anything unusual. The remainder of your army stands in waiting; men and women who still look at you with reverence, who will jump into this war without question, simply because you ask it of them.

Leaning your weight against the flank of _Trikova_ , he is muzzle deep in your braids when you see them. A dirty boy with unruly dark hair, a pair of chrome goggles sitting messily on his forehead. He has shadows beneath his eyes, a weary weight on his shoulders—his second’s sash is looped around his waist, haphazard and careless. Washon looks ages older than when you’d last seen him—cradling the dead body of his sister—has it only been days? Has life upended so quickly?

He leans against the side of a much larger warrior—narrow in the shoulders, with the grace of a doe, his face splitting into something of a grin. Wide, and true, and holding so much; you are silent through the pain, the hurt, the loss. Daxon grins through it. He looks at death and smiles. He is his own person. His dark skin has an unusual pallor, from the drugs, and the darkness of the tunnels—of the blood and raw meat that he had ripped through. He looks worn, and tattered, at the edge of his rope—you see how Washon holds his weight upward, keeps him steady.

“My common sense finally deigned to show himself,” you call, as _Trikova_ huffs loudly in your ear, nudging your jaw. Upon his face are marking—white powder spread around his eyes, through his black bristle. Pulled back into the midnight of his mane—it was how Anya’s horse was painted.

“I was looking for my cog,” he yells back, though he is close enough to speak lower, “Couldn’t seem to find it anywhere—and yet here it is. Stuck to your face.” His eyes are only for you, his smile shying away into something more genuine, something softer.

“Do you want it back?” You had forgotten the glinting gold trinket on your brow—it had grown to be such a part of your ritual.

“You can keep it,” a considering hum that is low enough that only you, and Washon, can hear. His eyebrow arches upward, “I suppose you need something to improve that ugly mug of yours.”

It is par the course for Daxon, but Washon looks about ready to fight for your honor—shaking your head, you hold out a hand to keep the boy from getting hurt. You are in front of your warriors, they look at you from a distance, though they do _look_. Your face falls into neutrality, and you swallow the need to laugh and cry.

So instead you extend your hand; and Daxon clasps your forearm.

“It has only been a short while,” you _need_ Daxon, in a way you haven’t needed many—or maybe you simply want him near to. To balance you, like Washon is balancing him. “Are you sure?” None of the others from inside the mountain were ready for the hard ride west; fresh warriors from the _lekkru_ and _floudonkru_ had slipped through the night to join you. Others would fall in from their territories as you passed through— _flahk_ and _ekwhi_.

“I wouldn’t wish you on the most experienced healer,” he smiles, dark eyes glinting, “At the least, I’ve grown used to your whining.” He doesn’t say it—just as you won’t—he needs you. Indra will hover, and scowl, and coax—she loves him so—but he needs space, he needs something to distract him from what he has endured. War is a distraction you are both used to.

“ _Heda_ doesn’t whine, _Dakson_.” You lull, while squeezing his arm, and letting him go—turning your eyes toward Washon who watches this interaction with wide, unsure eyes. He’s a beautiful boy—there is still something youthful in the curve of his cheeks, the slant of his brow. He is only four seasons your junior, but you feel eons older—ancient and eternal. You look at him, but speak to Daxon, “Is he to the shadows?”

This boy will not be joining you to war, though you can tell he intends to ask. If Daxon has been his mentor, there must be a grace about him—a gentle touch. Your comrade would not suffer dull-headed brutes. You need someone who can be unseen, who can slip through the dark and green of the forest without sound or notice. You would spare one _jusbrotas_ to join him, Washon may track, and heal, but a warrior he is not; yet.

“The night itself,” Daxon says with a slow nod, that you mirror.

“ _Washon kom trigedakru_ ,” you are solemn, orders must be given with severity and understanding, you ask much of him; even if he doesn’t know. “I ask this of you, and you alone. No word has come from the mountain, nor the _skaigedakru_ to the west. I want to know all; I leave you with my most trusted _jusbrota_ , and the swiftest messenger in the forest.”

You _need_ to know. You _must_ know. Clarke has not walked through your mind these last four days, she has not joined Costia and Enrik as those you have killed for some lauded future—just as Daxon hadn’t. This man who stands before you alive. Maybe—

You shake yourself before hope can sink its claws into you.

Washon stands straight, falling out from underneath Daxon’s arm, his hand hitting his chest a little too harshly, “ _Sha_ , _heda_!” This boy. This boy braver than you, this boy whose heart is true, and kind, and genuine. He does not know that you wish you could be as he is—that you strive so hard to follow his steps, but are unable to. He would not leave behind one he cares for, he would move planets to have his sister back—his love is absolute, and you relish his conviction.

Stepping closer, you don’t return his salute, instead you press your lips softly to his hairline—just below his goggles. “You brought him back to me,” you whisper, so low not even Daxon can hear, “Thank you.” He can’t know how he has saved you, if only to have given you a path out of the dark—or at the very least, someone to share it with you. So that you are not so very lonely. This boy, this brave boy, have given you back a small piece of your soul.

* * *

Riding gives you too much time to think, the wind catching the edges of your clothing and armor, the pull of your hair as you lean forward on _Trikova_ ’s back. You band of warriors is more than you had intended to bring—but you’d had too many volunteers. Too many eager for fresh combat, clambering after the foray with the mountain fizzled out and away—they still don’t understand, they bristle with confusion. But no more missiles have fallen, and all those from the belly of the mountain have returned. Your mount is bred for war, he is strong and sturdy where others need to rest and mill; you move with the forward party, scouting the land. Unable to mind yourself around those you command—they look to you, their eyes follow you.

There is such an expectation—a weight—that you find yourself slipping away more, and more.

It takes three weeks to reach the sands of the _drisankru_ —three weeks, and you know nothing. Not of the mountain, not of the sky people—not of Clarke. You’d made this choice to travel to the edge of the world; where news would be weeks away at any given time. Sometimes you think you see her at the edges of your vision—glints of golden hair, or the brightest of blue eyes. But when you turn to find her, she’s never there—there is only empty places that you long to never see her.

Daxon corners you one night, five days into the ride, his hand pressing against the bark of the tree you lean against—watching the dark beyond the camp’s fire. Keen eyes searching for danger where you know there would be none—a thousand war hardened warriors fear very little. Not carnivorous mountains, or the mysteries of the desert.

“When are you going to talk about it?” He opens with, his silhouette bleeding into the shadows, his eyes and teeth the only points to focus on in the dark. “I can’t much speak with authority on the subject, since I wasn’t present.”

You scoff, “Then you should hold your tongue.”

You turn and watch him—this man who had been dead to you, who’s death had carved out pieces of you that you hadn’t been willing to part with. You press his serenity to your brow before every battle—the cog that all men are, a piece to a greater whole. Daxon had thought you the moving piece, the motion to the machine. That first gear—does he think you broken now? Stationary and useless?

“You think so loudly,” he looks lost, grasping firmly onto one of the last conversations you had had before his death—before his _capture_.

And like a script being written, you reply, “They’re as quiet as any; hence why they are thoughts.” Neither one of you had felt particularly witty, particularly steady, but this was something you could hold onto. Something you cold press into your chest in place of a heartbeat—this moment before everything shattered. “Your words on the other hand...”

“This war unsettled you, _heda_.” How many times could you have the same conversation, and it be true? How many times could you fall to tatters and mend yourself shoddily on the march toward another war. Stepping away from him, moving backwards into the dark, you watch how the light flickers across his face as he shifts closer to the camp. He still has some hope of saving himself, some hope of pulling himself up and away from ruin—you have no such hope. No such desire.

“I was born with the sky on my shoulders, Daxon.” You know he can barely see you from where he stands in the light; you are Atlas, the titan of myth, the tragedy of duality. The man who had been punished to eternity of holding up the heavens, so that it may never tumble onto the heads of mortals. “And then the sky fell.”

* * *

You find them two days from the border of _flahkkru_ and _drisankru_. A militia two hundred large, their rifles slung over shoulders, and their horses large and stocky—for carts and caravans, not for war. Only about half look armed, their small eyes eager for the horizon—searching for the danger, though they seem oblivious that it is already there. Dressed in hard browns and forgiving tans, prepared to blend into the desert they had just recently crossed. Their appearance digs under your skin like a reminder—they look like the mountain men, with their caps tugged tight to their eyes, and their clothing checkered and meshed.

Many of your warriors bristle at the sight of the weapons, the rifles over shoulders, and hands dangling close to sidearm. The part of you that had been Marcus Sullivan is eager, is _knowing_ , but you wait. You watch. You send a message back with a scout to bring Usipe forward—and the first half of your army. Enough to smother this small incursion—but they are a symptom of a larger sickness. A plight that has plagued your people like a mosquito does a wolf—slowly, but deadly. A bite every few seasons, far to the west where whole villages fall into the sands without word.

You are a predator—you must know your prey, you must know how they group, and scatter, and huddle. You must know what makes them fight, and what prompts them to flee—this is how you had seen to the sky people, this is how you’d seen to the mountain men. Never without a misstep, but forever with caution.

But war is messy, as you had once told Echo.

Your warriors at your left flank are discovered before the mass of your army has begun filtering through the forest—a sharp trumpet sounds, and this foreign militia—these soldiers of beyond the edge of the world—pull their rifles free, raising them to narrowed eyes.

War is messy.

War is chaos.

As your _gonakru_ dissolve into wild savagery—they still mind orders—sharp barks for movement, even subtle tips of the chin. These strangers have seen resistance, but they have never seen this. If feels like only moments since your face was last warm with blood—the crimson dripping into your eyes, and off the point of your chin. You lose more warriors than you wish—two dozen easily crumble with bullets in their chests—but you are simply too many. This fervor is boiling over, and there is no hope.

The field that had once been golden with grass, is now slathered red with blood. Bodies piling and falling, some still gasping for breath around gaping wounds in their chest. Some with wide eyes blinking sightlessly at the sky. They dress like the mountain men, their weapons and manners are similar as well—but their skin is dark, not the pale of someone who has lived below the ground. Their fingers dirty, and the hairs on the backs of their arms bleached.

Stepping through them, around them, you can’t help the shiver that crawls up your spine like the first breeze of winter. Sharp, and bitter.

In the center of their dead horses, and their slaughtered tradesmen, you find what burns something fierce in your chest—your people, their faces swollen and bruised, their hands and feet shackled. They are still until one voice, far off and distant starts the chant— _heda, heda, heda_ —this new weight. Each of these prisoners—no, _slaves_ \--has a brand burned into the side of their neck. Some healed and scabbed, others blistering and infected.

**FRT. LVNWRTH**

The letters mean nothing to you. These dead men mean nothing to you. The healers you have brought with you tend to the wounded—to those who had been captured. You walk west, as if you can see the edge of the world where these scavengers have come from. These vultures— _pikas_. You stand at the furest stain of blood, looking down at a man who had been running away when his men had been dying by the handful. His uniform is crisp, his hands clean—sans the gaping wound where a blade had dug home between his ribs. The holster for his sidearm was unclasped, but it still sat harmlessly within—just beside that is a radio. The light blinking red— _blinking, blinking, blinking._

The air crackles—static crawling in your senses, across the backs of your teeth.

“ _Command to Mississippi canyon expedition, report._ ”

Dead air—static.

“ _Commander Marowisk, report_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find me over on tumblr @ **civilorange** ; i do sneak peeks, weird pictures, maps, and prompts. I also reblog so much ridiculous stuff, I don't even know what I'm doing.


	20. the experts at the fall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Daxon,”
> 
> “I know you,” the way he says it, with his eyes as much as his words, “I know you.” As if that’s all it takes to see between the lines, see everything you’re not saying.
> 
> “Not anymore, Daxon.” He knew some version of you, the person you were before you bathed in blood anew—before you cut out more of yourself to make room for the monster you were becoming. He knew a girl who was sad, and angry, and too large for the skin she was in—you’re not that anymore. You’ve wilted and folded in on yourself, half the size you used to be because Lexa was dead, and gone. She was left with Clarke at the mountain—she burned to death in Tondisi—she took Anya’s bullet—she drank Gustus’ poison deep.
> 
> She is dead—and you’re alive.
> 
> So how could you be her?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we are, at the end. Sorry for the long delay, I've fallen on my face trying to buy a car, and I forgot how annoying this whole process is. But, hopefully my trials will be over soon; (after I stop being such a pain in the dealership's ass). But, my idiocy notwithstanding! We've made it, kiddies, this is the end of this little journey. It was never supposed to be such an endeavor, but because of you guys, I had the muse to keep writing. Thank you so much, because I really have had a blast. I'd love to know your final thoughts on this (Hate me? Love me? ) whole adventure. Where you think the sequel is heading. Anything you'd like to see in the sequel. I got so much inspiration in your comments, in the things you picked out, or liked, or wondered about. 
> 
> Feel free to message me on tumblr with ideas/prompts/comments. I love talking to you guys, whether just responding to comments, or writing prompts, or answering asks. Here is my Washon doodle! Hardcore penciling. [Washon!](http://civilorange.tumblr.com/image/130737789129) .
> 
> You may notice I've added the series name to this. Whoop!

The seasons are different here—winter days are mild, but once the sun slips down below the far western mountains, it is cold and bitter. A biting chill that has found a home in your bones, feasting on the warmth of your blood. It doesn’t help matters that you are usually soaked in blood—both yours, and your enemies. You can’t say for certain how long you’ve been waging war against the _pikas_ , the days bleed into one another, stretching far until you can only imagine it’s been months. It is only slightly warmer, but hardly enough of a difference to not wrap in furs when motionless in the dark.

You have a council of one tonight, Daxon having forced his way into your tent to treat the wound you’d been determined to ignore—if only he’d let you. You’d hidden the gash below your drape of fur, and while none of your generals had been the wiser—Daxon always knows.

He still has the red of sleepless night at the edges of his eyes—like you surely do—and you never call him on the shake of his hands. They are steady when he stitches, and when he saves lives, but somehow in the moments in between—they tremble. Lincoln had twitched too, you’d seen the tick at the corner of his jaw, the clench of his teeth—and he’d only been a reaper for days. Daxon had been there for _years_ , their faithful little bloodhound, tied by red to the base of their mountain.

He doesn’t talk about it, and maybe you should make him—but you don’t have the same way with words that he does, or Enrik did—or hell, even Lincoln. You can give him things to consume his mind, to bury his fears and worries, but you don’t have something as simple as _words_. Costa would know how to pull his demons free, how to smooth and sedate them without fear of shattering his resolve; of doing more harm than good.

So you remain with him, in the silence that falls between you like twilight, not quiet night, and far past afternoon. His hands don't shake now as he presses into the tender skin around your wound. The blood has long since stopped flowing, but your life can feel it thrumming below the surface. Rushing, looking for a way to slip your veins and nourish the earth. You don't look at where he works, you focus on his eyes. The way they shiver, the slightest quiver of his pupil that sells his secrets no matter how sure his hands; does he know how they betray him? He must.

Do yours betray you?

It has been at least two cycles of the moon since you’d coaxed your army past the edge of the world; the canyon that had seemed to have no bottom until you’d made sense of the map the _pikas_ had. Faded gray lines of a folded piece of paper; a grid of blocks dissecting the terrain. Their trail hadn’t been hard to find, as they hadn’t seemed particularly concerned with hiding it. Your warriors were grinning mouths searching for battle, their eyes bright and their chests heaving. That first spill of blood hadn’t been enough; it was near child’s play to overwhelm their convoy. One that had obviously been intent to pilfer your people; just enough soldiers to fend off stray _drisankru_ warriors who happened upon them.

All their rifles had been piled into one of the carts, you and your _jusbrotas_ the only ones willing to touch the cool metal of the weapons. Legend lives on, too ingrained into the souls of your people to simply wash away once the mountain’s shadow no longer lingers like a bad omen. You leave most of the _trikru_ on the eastern lip of the canyon; dug in with orders to remain until winter’s end. To send reports back to Indra, to keep Polis informed. You gather _drisankru_ and _minakru_ warriors close, those who know these enemies well. Have seen their quick and merciless ways.

You learn how they take the young and strong, branding them with hot iron, shoving them into cages with loops of steel around their wrists. The people you freed from the caravan’s confines are bristling young _sekens_. Some too young to bear a sash, but all strong in their shoulders and iron in their spine. You press your hand to each of their chests—feel the strength of their heart beneath your palm. You feel them, and ask them to join you. None have refused. They slink off into tightly wrapped furs, clutching daggers and spears in grips so sure their knuckles whiten. They look out across the bottomless end and are the first to step onto the narrow path to bring them to the bottom. To the deserted camp of past _pikas_.

“I’m sorry," Daxon says suddenly, pulling you from your musings, his eyes are still focused on your wound. Thread pinched tightly between his fingers as he closes another stitch. Neat rows that your young five year old self would have been envious—sewing had never been a strong skill of yours. “About Anya—and Gustus.” He looks up at you then, quickly enough to see how your throat bobs and your jaw clenches.

“We’re at war, people die,” the words skip out too quickly, like they’d only half fallen through your mind before slipping off your tongue.

“That truth notwithstanding,” it’s as if you hadn’t really spoken, he turns his eyes back downward, and continues stitching. “I’m also sorry—for me.”

You don’t respond, not immediately—your muscles coil, your fists clench and then loosen. Yes, that’s right—he was dead to, despite the fact that he sits before you now. You carried his weight on your shoulders, even if his ghost never deigned to haunt you personally.

“If left to me, you’d have lived,” you would have taken his bullets, you would have pressed their red deep into your veins if it meant Indra would smile, if it meant soft, genuine Daxon would know less pain. You know this—and he knows this, and that was why he had given you no choice that night so many lifetimes ago. Why he shoved you clear and away, and did not allow you a moment to protest. You would have died for him in that moment, and so much would have died with you—Daxon was always the smarter one of the two of you.

“You’d have lived, and I’d have failed my people.” You would have been selfish, and died, and how many would have died because of it? So many more than have died now because of your doing—your choices. Reaching out with a hand tight from clenching it, fingers almost numb from the strength of your restraint. “I needed you, and because of that I would have saved you. I couldn’t think of everyone else.”

No, just him. And how he possessed some piece of your soul that you hadn’t been allowed to ruin.

How you needed that piece.

Your throat is tight, because while Daxon took that weight on himself—you’ve made so many other choices. Horrible, malicious choices that you can’t even breathe into words. You can’t describe the things you’d been willing to do, to _be_ , simply for some impossible, distant tomorrow. Victory stands on the backs of sacrifice; no, victory stands on the dead you leave behind. The bodies that pile up behind you; their lives’ future painted in the shades of their blood.

“You think of them now,” he hums while leaning back and wiping the blood from your arm. You look to see how the neat black stitches cross through the ink of your tattoo. Breaking the reflection, the mirror image—ruining the illusion. “And only them.”

Your brow tucks, “Speak true, Daxon. No need to mince words.”

He is wiping his hands, a little too roughly, the pale of his palms turning red—not from your blood, but from how roughly he is rubbing at the groves. Trying to scratch the hint of crimson from his nail beds and palm lines. You know his hands are shaking below the brutality, that his bones rattle, and his lungs wheeze.

“This aloofness hasn’t worked since we were children,” it isn’t an accusation, but a quiet reminder, a hint of something below the man mangled by the red.

You scoff, a harsh exhale through your nostrils as you lean away, “There is no _aloofness_ ,”

He watches you—pupils shivering, hands still and yet shaking, and he doesn’t look away. He lets you see him as he is now—no longer young in the eyes, no longer unshaken and sure. He is a bent and curved thing, pressed so close to breaking, but never doing so. His teeth click very quietly as his hands remain palm up on his knees. You see him, and he sees you.

Taller, leaner, colder. He sees the graveyards in your gaze, and the poison in your bones. You wonder if he sees the ghosts living in your trembling pupils, or in the sick green of your eyes. How much of you does he recognize? Enrik had seen a stranger when he saw you again—a monster that had devoured his small sparrow friend, and somehow slipped into her skin. A masquerade.

“There is, but you’re not.” He continues, and you press your lips together, “You care, and that’s why you hurt. If you didn’t, this all wouldn’t bother you.”

“This all?”

He smiles, but it isn’t happy—it’s somehow sad and hopeful both, like something off in the distance is inevitable. A thunderstorm, the first snow of winter, the longest day of summer. “The girl, whoever she was. I’ve only heard a few things, but the fact that they haven’t been from you, means something.”

“Daxon,”

“I know you,” the way he says it, with his eyes as much as his words, “ _I_ know _you_.” As if that’s all it takes to see between the lines, see everything you’re _not_ saying.

“Not anymore, Daxon.” He knew some version of you, the person you were before you bathed in blood anew—before you cut out more of yourself to make room for the monster you were becoming. He knew a girl who was sad, and angry, and too large for the skin she was in—you’re not that anymore. You’ve wilted and folded in on yourself, half the size you used to be because _Lexa_ was dead, and gone. She was left with Clarke at the mountain—she burned to death in _Tondisi_ —she took Anya’s bullet—she drank Gustus’ poison deep.

She is dead—and you’re alive.

So how could you be her?

“People think they stop being whoever they were, when they change. So much changes about a person—when your favorite color changes from red, to blue. Do you stop liking red?” He piles cloth in the bowl of red water he has at his side, “Or do you simply not like it as much as blue?” You don’t have an opinion on red, or blue, and your tucking brows must show that to him, because he smiles slightly and gets back to work.

“You’re still the person I knew, you always will be—the past has happened, even if it seems like whole lifetimes ago.” His smile is like Indra’s smile—it tugs at your brittle creaking heart, and warms something foreign and true in your chest. He pauses, a hand raising to rub over the thick curls on his head. “Tell me about her.”

A firm shake of your head, “No.”

His infinite patience shines through, and for the first time in so long, his gaze is sure—the dark of his eyes warming, the shadows fall away from his smile. “Tell me about her.”

Persistence. Breathing in through your nose, you stand up—as if height really wins you some advantage—turning away from him to look at the pilfered map you took from the _pikas_. Marks have been made, black prints of your thumb where battles had taken place. There’s a smattering across the map, too many for your chest to lighten. How many have died? These enemies are focused, they’re relentless. And what they lack in common sense, they make up with tenacity.

“There is no _her_.” You don’t know what he wants you to say—you don’t know who said anything to him—your mind is on Indra. Is on how keenly she exposed your restless need for war, your desire to journey far.

“Tell me about Clarke.”

Her name is like thunder on a cloudless day, startling even if it is harmless. A promise of things to come. Your tell is how even when your spine stiffens, you don’t turn to look at him. You gaze at the flicker of the candle instead. Watch it dance, bright—and small, so impossibly small.

“Clarke is— _was_ —,” you blink slowly, wrapping your mind around the tense, the word feels particularly foreign on your tongue. _Gonasleng_ has never felt so wrong before, clenching your teeth quick, before continuing. “—the morning after a storm.” The words are metallic ash on your tongue; chalky and cloying at the back of your throat. Talking about her is worse than Costia, or Enrik, or Gustus—because of how Clarke had looked at you as your left. Like some piece of her still expected you to come back—to turn around and prove to her that you weren’t exactly what you were. What she had seen of you. She believed in some scrap of good that somehow survived the graveyard of your chest—the wasteland of your heart.

“The sky gray, and the ground marked black where lightning had flashed, lakes overflowing, spilling into valleys full of flowers and golden grass.” You can almost imagine it—no, you can, because your eyes have closed and you can picture exactly what you say. You’d been young still—a teething wolfling—and your father had point out the scorch mark of the storm. The grass leaning away, the ground scarred.

“Anything seems possible in the morning, especially after the harshest storms.” Clarke was the first light of morning in your forever night—in the dark you had wrapped around yourself like armor. You’ve grown so comfortable in the gale winds, that in the morning you hadn’t known what to do with the silence. You hadn’t known to not stare directly into the sun; that the dots blooming before your eyes were omens casting horrors into the first glimpses of afternoon — the sun having crawled up the sky to sit above your head.

But before noon—before your shadow was swallowed, and the glinting sun boiled your blood, and burned your bones—there was the cool blue of morning.

“Clarke made so much seem—possible.” Your arms have crossed, tucking your hands into the crooks of your elbows, the muscles of your arm stretching the stitches until they nearly pop. But you don’t feel that, you can only ache inside where Daxon can have no hope to mend—no stitch exists that can piece your heart back together.

Maybe not stitches, but his words are soft, a balm to your soul, “Like what?”

Your lips press, your eyes snared by that small dancing flame—so small. “Living.”

“You’re alive.” He supplies, even when you know he understands; he’s allowing you to walk through these thoughts.

“I’m surviving, not living” and just barely, half the time. “Clarke did not believe them to be synonymous.”

You turn to look at him because he laughs, the red in his eyes seems faded, and the white press of his lips is gone. He looks like Daxon again, as you remembered him—not untouched, but healing. “That’s because they aren’t.”

His palms are open on his knees still, hints of crimson rusted into the corners of his palms, into the creases that skirt across his fingers. But he doesn’t shake, he doesn’t scratch and rub.

“They aren’t,” you agree, but despite knowing this—despite knowing in your heart of hearts that you are doing so much _besides_ living, you can’t bring yourself to reach for it. You can’t think yourself deserving of it—Clarke had asked if you deserved better.

The simple answer?

You don’t.

* * *

 

At some point you know when you’re standing on the edge of everything; not the end of the world, you’d left that behind months ago. No, you can feel it in the very soles of your feet, in the vibration of your bones. The enemy has become erratic and restless, their numbers splitting and spreading. It had been whole night since you’d seen the glint of their technology last; it doesn’t sit in your stomach well. You can’t put your finger on exactly what it is, but so much of you understands where you are right now. You’re glad you’d left Indra in _Tondisi_ , you’re glad that there is someone there to manage in your absence.

“They can’t survive another war,” you say to Daxon, watching the harsh empty plains before you; the moon high and nearly eclipsed by the dark. Only a sliver of light making it through. The bitter air of winter filling your lungs as you breath deep, stretching the ache in your chest until it hurts and reminds you that you are indeed alive. Alive somehow, when everyone else around you, is dead. Their shadows crawling across the ground, even when their spirits don’t appear to you.

You have nearly no _trikru_ warriors left; you’d sent them home with warnings and information, you’d packed up their wounded and slung supplies over their shoulders. Indra will know how to receive them; Indra will know what it means.

“They’ve fought their whole lives,” he gives in return, his shoulders brushing your own, though his body is wrapped tightly in furs to ward off the cold. He is _trikru_ through and through, and hasn’t any love for the colder seasons. “I don’t think you’re giving them enough credit.”

“Just because a sapling will grow between the rocks, doesn’t mean it will thrive.” And that is what they’ve done; living despite the hard times afforded to them. Sprouting through stone and gravel, devouring what flecks of sunlight they could find. The _trikru_ know hardship, they know pain; but you don’t want to burden them with this new war. You are here because you belong to all your people; you are not _trikru_ , just as you are not _azgeda_ or _drisankru_. You are somehow outside those distinctions; all conflict your people face, from the great water to the end of the world, is yours.

You’ve come because the desert asked for you, but that is your weight to bear—not the people of the forest.

“That’s why you sent them away,” he exhales, like somehow this had escaped his notice; how carefully you chose your messengers, how exact you were in the messages they held. “You don’t plan on coming back.” He looks at you, in the dark you can only make out the white of his eyes. He’s stopped moving, as if he’s holding his breath and waiting for your confirmation.

“The _pikas_ have folded in behind us,” you relay, “My _jusbrotas_ found them two nights past; they plan on sieging us from all sides.” Your bones ache, and the bitter cold lingers inside even when the sun’s high, and the heat blisters along the tan of your skin. The cold still lives deep down where it can’t be touched, where the warmth can’t help. Your campaign has hit a finally, your army stretched, tired, and surrounded.

“Why are you still fighting?” He is angry, suddenly, his body tall and strong before you, his hands opening and closing like he might reach to strangle you—if you weren’t exactly who you are. “This doesn’t make sense.”

You smile, because madness rarely makes sense to those who have not lived there—you can remember clearly the humid swamps of the _whetkru_. How Enrik had his warriors’ burn food, and poison water, how he had chipped, and bitten, and stolen away little pieces at a time until you had considered defeat—how it had seemed so possible.

If you weren’t exactly who you were.

“This war is a novelty to them,” you sooth, so calm, despite the storm in your chest, “This is pride, and principle, and glory.” It was something they had been coaxed into by circumstances they hadn’t been expecting—they lost their caravan of thieves, and had overreacted. Had thrown their weight into the conflict without knowing their enemy. There was no necessity, there was no burning need, and there is nothing, but some militaristic vanity.

“When they loath the dead bodies piling up, more than they cherish the glory they gain,” how long will that be? Discourage them from war, discourage them from this bloody, dark, endless battle you’ve forsaken yourself to. “They will break; they will weigh themselves, and be found wanting.” You can see it already, in the hesitation in young soldier’s eyes, in the men running away, instead of standing their ground.

You are a stranger in this strange land, and you have no true reason to believe you will make it out of this—make it back across the edge of the world, and into the lush green of your forests. No, you must make them regret this choice, you must make them linger on the knowledge that this was unnecessary, and costly.

You must make them realize the price of crossing your canyon—and it is _yours_ now.

The mountain men, horrid as they were, had been trying to survive—in their own, twisted, vile way. The _pikas_ just want to stack the board in their favor, and you know that men like that do not play the game to completion—they bow out long before checkmate.

“And how long will that take?” He asks quietly, looking at you like maybe he does see your madness—the black that lingers at the corners of your green eyes. The glassy sharpness of your gaze, as you look out into this empty nothing of bitter cold.

“Not long now,” exhaling slowly, “not long.”

* * *

 

The sounds around you bleed away, sinking into the dirt below you, and the clouds above you. The buzz in your ears getting louder, and louder, until there is nothing but the hurricane breaking through the gilded cage that had kept it contained for all these years inside your chest. The sharp crack of brittle gold, and creak of rusted hinges and like nothing at all, the cage was open—an unforgiving breath of wind, and the downpour of the damned. This was the hurricane you kept hidden away from everyone, this monstrous storm that cared nothing for stolen kingdoms, or pilfered crowns. Nothing about desperate love, and necessary betrayal. It was the violence, and the malevolence that twists and festers inside you—underneath your honorable intentions, and selfless sacrifices. It is the sneering anger, and the bubbling hate.

It howls now. Free and strong.

This was what your father had seen in you when you were only a child; the _capability_ you had for destruction, how able your slight hands had been for careful, meticulous hurt. There was nothing left to tether you to the ground, only gale winds and sleet rain inside the quiet gray graveyard of your soul. Pulling your hand away from the wet fabric of your chest, you could hardly appreciate the warm red of your own blood. So much of it. It drenches you, blurry and losing color to your unfocusing eyes.

You’re dying.

You thought it’d feel different.

“Stay down.” Costia urges, appearing like a wraith, decaying under the rising sun, cheeks peeling away and hollow, copper eyes bright in the rotting dark of her face. “ _Skai_ —Lexa— _please_.” She sounds desperate, her voice cracking, her bright, bright, _bright_ eyes filling with tears. You’re pushing yourself up from the ground, and you can’t feel your hands—you know they are there, at the ends of your forearms, but you can’t _feel_ them.

Costia mills at your side, and you can’t look at her, you can’t acknowledge how solid and _there_ she seems—because with each breath you take, with each painful expansion of your chest, you’re getting closer to her. These ghosts that have chased you your whole life have finally caught you; are able to lay their hands on your chilling skin and call you brethren.

You’re dying.

Wrapping numb, and clumsy fingers around the grip of the weapon in your hand, you turn toward the glare of the sunrise. It is tripping just over the glades of sand, and rock, and _ruin_. Bodies scattered across every surface, men and women wounded badly enough that they simply writhe.

Costia hovers like a worried wraith, your guardian reaper, as you begin toward absolution—dying with each step, and every pint of blood. Your spirit tethered to you by stubborn will alone, before it would drift off and find its new host. You can feel Arling’s hands heavy on your shoulders, keeping both of your feet on the ground, his soul's weight added to your own.

“Come now, _keryon_.” Arling says softly in your ear, “just a little further, and then you can rest.” The sounds around you warble and expand, stretching out like hooking fingers, trying to grasp time and place. Nothing makes sense, nothing is absolute. Your predecessor’s hands keep you moving, your toes dragging through the sand, your feet never quiet lifting completely.

You’re cold.

The chill bleeds through the crimson soaked fabric of your clothing, and the metallic weight of your armor, down, down, down it falls until it curls around your bones, and digs fingertips into the very marrow keeping you together. Keeping you in this world.

You don’t want to die here, in this strange land, in this _dead_ land. There are no trees, no rivers, and no mountains. Nothing alive and whole. There is only cracked rock and flitting sand. This isn’t _home_ —but you are a merchant wolf, a pillaging child king. You’ve stolen kingdoms to put your throne in; you’ve conquered, and taken, and stolen. And none of it feels like home.

You’re done pretending. You’ve made it this far convincing everyone that you are something you’re not—that you’re more than a northern orphan. That you’re someone worth following—someone worth believing in. Your father had it right what seems like whole lifetimes ago—you’d only been a child when he’d given you the advice that would allow you to shatter dynasties and steal empires. It hadn’t meant much to you then, it had been nothing more than a night you’d been able to almost pretend that you were his daughter—not his apprentice.

“Legitimacy,” he had said, whispering quietly like the night would steal away his wisdom, like the trees would carve the words from his throat and use the knowledge for themselves. “Legitimacy is what matters. Beyond the breath in your lungs, and the sun in your hair, and the ground beneath your feet—legitimacy is what rules the wills of lesser men.” While there is plenty of morning sun in the blood damp mess of your hair, and solid ground underneath your worn boots; there is no breath in your lungs—they are shallow, wheezing things. But legitimacy? Oh, you have legitimacy. You are _heda_ ; you have a thousand seasons stitched into the seams of your soul, you hold not just the _trikru_ in your grasp, but all _gedakru_. Everything from the great water, to the end of the world is _yours_.

Had he seen all that when he looked into your child’s eyes? Had he seen how you would mangle, and ruin, and bleed the world because you had somehow convinced yourself that it was your _right_. Had he seen where it would bring you? Out beyond the edge of the world, into the parts of the world that were dead, and dying. Had he seen how you’d look into the calm of a lake and be unable to recognize yourself under the war paint, and the blood. Under all the things you told yourself you had to become, because being anything else would mean it was over.

But you’re done pretending, so where does that leave you?

“Where’s Clarke?” You’re dying and she still hasn’t shown up, she still hasn’t walked out of the black at the edges of your vision. Gold as the sunrise. Your haunts shoulder your weight, hold you as you have them for all these years; refusing to let them go because who are you without them?

Just a meaningless orphan.

Lifting the rifle from where it hung forgotten at your side, you feel Marcus Sullivan slip into your soul, spilling his strength into your arms, and your hands, whispering short reminders in your ear. _It’s alright, kid_ , and _just hold it steady_. He doesn’t appear like the others, you can’t see the wrinkles of his smile, or the sadness in his eyes, but you can feel him. How strong his heart beats inside your own, how sure his hands are guiding yours.

Lifting so that the stock of the rifle is against your uninjured shoulder, if should feel foreign, but how many of your predecessors have killed with these? More than Marcus. There had been so much killing even before the world had ended—it had only been a matter of time.

 _Pop, pop_. You squeeze the trigger methodically—press, release, press, release. The first recoil catches you by surprise, hitting your shoulder painfully until you readjust and press the trigger again. You’re so far removed from the death like this—you suddenly understand how the mountain men never flinched when they killed. They couldn’t feel it—your people were just falling bodies, never really dead, simply asleep. Motionless and forgotten.

The chaos around you has no noise, your senses having fallen away like a rock to the bottom of a lake—everything wiggles and loses color, whole seconds lost to darkness every time you blink. The red of your blood dripping off your upper lip, rolling down and into the grit of your teeth.

“Where’s Clarke?” You ask again, though you don’t know who you’re asking—you don’t realize you’re yelling until you can suddenly hear yourself in the vibration of your jaw. The words loud and raw. Press, release, press, release.

 _Pop, pop_.

You don’t know how many you’ve killed, you can’t remember their faces, or their falling bodies. You can only hear your own breathing rattling around in your chest, hissing like a leak out your broken nose. You don’t know how many more steps you have left in you, but you’re not able to find out because a man charges from your side, unarmed but large. He swings quickly, a haymaker and you duck—except you don’t, because you’re body no longer answers to you. You no longer hold dominion over your muscles and bones—they protest and lock in place.

His forearm catches you on the bridge of your already broken nose and you can almost taste the crunch of cartilage. You’re suddenly on your back, looking up at a gray sky that is still too dark to be true morning. You have to turn your head because too much blood is filling your mouth, slipping between your teeth and threatening to drown you in red.

Spitting, and coughing, and wheezing, you still can’t feel your body, you can’t feel your arms—or legs—or how your chest struggles. Blinking slowly, you can see the shadows of soldiers, their frames improper and stretched—like a rippling reflection in a lake. Comical and wrong—so you laugh. Sharp, barking laughs that would remind you of dying animals if you could hear them—but you can feel them as a burn in your side, a splitting wound that threatens to open you completely.

“Where’s Clarke?” You ask, except this time your voice is sluggish and far away. You don’t realize you’ve closed your eyes until you feel cool hands on your cheeks; barely there, like the caress of a morning breeze, but it’s enough to coax your eyes open. For you to blink through the morning sun and find Costia, leaning over you with her back to the sun. You can’t make out her face, or how it has rotted away, you can only see the copper of her eyes. Loving, endless eyes.

“She’s not here, Lexa.” Costia sooths, her thumbs running through the blood on your cheekbones, her strength the only thing keeping your head from lulling to the side—or maybe you’re doing that yourself, because Costia’s dead. She’s only here because she’s dead. “Clarke’s not here.”

Clarke’s not here—she’s not _there_. You’re laughing harder now, large gasping breaths while clenching your eyes shut. You chased the sun west on some hope that maybe you’d meet her in the sands somewhere—where battle was heavy in your blood, where you could still lead your people with a blade. You had some idea that she’d be waiting for you out here—on the other side of the edge of the world.

But Clarke’s not here.

Your laughter is interrupted by a boot catching you in the ribs, rolling you onto your side as you cough up another mouthful of blood. Your lips are still curled into a smile, with your cheek resting in the sand, you can feel the cool touch of morning. And the not-yet sunrise.

“This one’s a damned lunatic,” you hear, though the voice is stilted and warped, you feel the boot again, though it is only a rough shove to put you back on your back.

“She took out the whole fucking company,” someone growls, and there’s a pressure at the base of your throat. A boot being pressed against your clavicles, “Never seen a waster use a rifle; let alone a half dead one.”

You can’t even call what you do struggling—you somehow lift one deadened arm to curl shaking fingers around the toes of the boot. Trying to pry them away from your throat, but it doesn’t budge. If anything it presses harder until you can hardly breathe.

No commander has lived past twenty five.

You won’t even make it to twenty.

You are a weapon hastily forged in battle. Not a metal blade tempered and cleaved, heated and formed—no, you are a rock sharpened by desperate hands, a spear crafted with tree branches and vines. You had been tested in battle, and had not been found wanting. Deadly, if not eloquent. Useful, if not ornate. You’d been found too late to be molded into the image of what the council wished in their deity chosen; you were shattered, and stronger for it. You were ruined, and broken, and rusted inside; and that had allowed you to hold their heaven upon your shoulders. You were crumbling anyway, dying young regardless—why not save them the worry of joining you.

Everything is going dark, it seeps in from the edges and consumes all. You know your eyes are still open, but you can’t see anything. Can’t feel the ground beneath your back, or warmth of the sun above you. You can just feel the press of your teeth together, blood squeezing through the slight gap beside your golden molar. Though your tongue is heavy and large in your mouth, you find yourself murmuring into the black, “Where?”

And though everything has faded away, and you can no longer feel the rise and fall of your chest, you hear the answer. You don’t know if it’s Enrik, or Costia, or Anya—or maybe you’re just answering yourself. It is how your namesake conquered the world, after all. “Toward the sun.”

And then nothing.

* * *

 

**fin.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry?
> 
> Come say _hey_ to me on tumblr @ **civilorange**.


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